LOGIC BENCH
OPEN THE BENCH
FREE · IN-BROWSER · NOTHING TO INSTALL

Build a working computer
from a single logic gate.

Logic Bench is a browser-based digital-logic simulator. Drag gates onto a canvas, watch the signals glow, and run real programs. Then open every box — all the way down to one NAND.

Every box opens. Nothing inside is fake.

BENCH · HALF ADDER ● SETTLED
{{ aTxt }} A {{ bTxt }} B XOR AND SUM {{ sumTxt }} CARRY {{ carryTxt }}
Toggle the switches — the wires carry the signal.
WHERE IT BEGINS

It starts with the elementary gates.

Six two-state logic gates, drawn with their standard distinctive shapes. This is the whole alphabet — every circuit on the bench, all the way up to the 6502, is built from these.

AND
A·B
OR
A+B
NOT
¬A
NAND
¬(A·B)
NOR
¬(A+B)
XOR
A⊕B

NAND alone is enough. Everything above is built from it.

THE DESCENT

From a running program, down to a single gate. With no gap.

The 6502 is the pinnacle of the climb — and even it opens. A bouncing ball runs on one built entirely from gates. Drill in, and keep going: at no level does a black box stand in for the truth.

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OUTPUT · 32×32 SCREEN M6502 PC $E2A1A $4CX $1F RUN ● 4 HzS $FDP nv-bdizc DOUBLE-CLICK THE CHIP TO LOOK INSIDE
INTERNAL BUS · /8 PC · 16 A / X / Y ALU8add · sub · and CONTROL ROMsmicrocode ×3 IR / DL EA ADDERbase + X FLAGSZ · C 64K RAM M6502 · MICROCODED DATAPATH INTO THE CONTROL ROMs ▾
CONTROL · {IR ≪ 3 | T} → CONTROL WORD T-COUNTER 3-bit · T0…T7 CONTROL ROM 0 CONTROL ROM 1 CONTROL ROM 2 21 CONTROL SIGNALS loadA · aluOp · busPC · busA · busMem · tReset … INTO THE ALU ▾
ALU8 · A OP B → RESULT ALU 8-bit A · 8 B · 8 OP · add sub and or RESULT · 8 Z C SUB is A + ¬B + 1 — the same adder, B inverted. INTO ONE FULL ADDER ▾
FULL ADDER · A B CIN → SUM COUT XOR XOR AND AND OR ABCIN SUMCOUT INTO ONE NAND ▾
NAND · THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL ABQ NAND Nothing inside is fake. EVERYTHING ABOVE IS BUILT FROM THIS · CLICK TO START OVER ↺
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WHAT IT DOES

See it work. Take it apart. Build it yourself.

See it work

Drag gates, switches and clocks onto a canvas. Wires glow when they carry a signal, LEDs light, displays count — and real programs run, live.

CHIP XORANDOR

Take it apart

Every chip opens to the gates inside — rendered live with that instance's real signals. Looking is sealed and zero-risk. You can drill forever.

HALF ADDER ALU · REGISTER TINY CPU 6502

Build it yourself

Climb from a half adder to a complete CPU — with an assembler, breakpoints, single-stepping, and your own editable memory.

TWO WAYS IN

Wander freely. Or be guided.

There's no wrong way to start. Drop gates on a blank canvas and follow your curiosity — or take the curated path, one lesson at a time.

OPEN SANDBOX

Play around.

A blank bench and the whole component palette. Wire up a hunch, load any of the 48 built-in circuits, pack your own chips, and open every box. Nothing to set up, nothing to break.

THE WORKBOOK

Learn it, step by step.

A 63-lesson workbook — roughly 277 pages — that carries you from one switch and one lamp all the way to the 6502. Structured, hands-on, and built to stay engaging the whole climb.

PROOF OF DEPTH

It really goes all the way down. Here's how we know.

The gate-built 6502 runs the same instruction set as the real chip — and we hold it to the real chip's standard.

VERIFIED · KLAUS DÖRMANN FUNCTIONAL SUITE
30,646,176
instructions executed against the reference suite — zero errors.
BOOTS LIKE SILICON

On power-up it reads the reset vector at $FFFC, jumps there, and winds the stack pointer down to $FD — exactly as the real chip does.

THE HONEST HYBRID

Clocking ~6,000 gate nodes per cycle is too slow to animate. So RUN fast-forwards a verified-equivalent emulator, while STEP runs the actual gates — always one step from the real thing, nothing hidden.

A LIBRARY THAT BUILDS ON ITSELF

A 48-circuit library that deliberately scales upward, plus a 63-lesson workbook — roughly 277 pages from one switch and one lamp all the way to the 6502.

THE CLIMB

What you can build.

Start with six gates. Each rung is built from the one below it — nothing skipped, nothing faked — until you reach the 6502 at the top.

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WHO IT'S FOR

Three kinds of curious.

01 · SELF-LEARNERS

Finally understand how a computer actually works — concretely, not by analogy. By building and opening one.

02 · STUDENTS & EDUCATORS

A computer-architecture course you can touch. Every abstraction — registers, ALU, flags, stack, PC — is something you build, then drill into.

03 · 6502 ENTHUSIASTS

A real, verified, fully dissectable 6502 in the browser — running real machine code, openable down to one gate.

Every box opens. Nothing inside is fake.

Start with one gate.
End with a computer.

Free. Runs in any browser. Nothing to install.

Start building — free, in your browser →