Nick Macias Calls for Vibe Coders to "Touch Metal" with a Hand-Programmed Eight-Bit SBC

Maker Nick Macias has designed an eight-bit single-board computer designed for education and fun, inspired by some of the earliest computers available to the public — complete with front-panel bit-toggle programming: the Touch Metal.

"The Touch Metal board is an educational tool for working with and learning assembly language and machine code, and learning a bit about computer architecture at the 'bare-metal' level," Macias explains. "It fits in your hand, is programmed with a set of push buttons, has an LCD display for examining memory and registers, and even has a built-in disassembler for showing you the assembly language corresponding to memory contents. This provides a relatively gentle introduction to low-level programming, but is also fun for those already familiar with assembly language and machine code."

The Touch Metal draws inspiration from early examples of what would later come to be known as personal computers, like the MITS Altair 8800, Commodore KIM-1, and the Science of Cambridge (later Sinclair) MK14. It's not programmed using a keyboard, nor even files stored on media like cassette tape or punch-cards; instead, programs are entered by toggling memory directly using push-button switches on the front of the board.

"Computer Science is increasingly detached from the low-level aspects of the underlying CPU/memory system," Macias explains of the device's inspiration. "With vibe-coding, this detachment is absolute: you don't even need to understand much about the higher-level aspects of the system. This board is an attempt to help people re-connect with those lower-level aspects. With the Touch Metal board, you examine and modify memory one byte at a time, by typing in addresses and data in octal (using 8 push buttons). After entering your code, you can single-step the CPU, examine registers and memory, and really see what the CPU is doing as it executes your code."

You won't find a recognizable eight-bit microprocessor on the board: it's based on a custom architecture built with education in mind and offering a simplified instruction set, minimal addressing modes with a focus on direct memory access, and breaks on octal-digit binaries for hand-assembly. "It allows you to store four programs in non-volatile memory," Macias notes, "so you can re-run your favorite programs without having to toggle them in each time" — but otherwise the board lacks any way to interface with external devices.

More information is available on Hackaday.io and on the project website; boards are for sale on Lectronz at $40 including a USB Type-C cable for power, with design files, a manual, and source code available on GitLab under the reciprocal Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.