Ben Eater (YouTube channel)

What the channel covers

Ben Eater makes careful, unhurried videos on electronics, computer architecture and networking. The famous projects build complete computers on breadboards, so you see every chip and every wire and how a program becomes voltages. With only around 134 videos, almost everything on the channel is worth watching.

Series to start with

• Building an 8-bit breadboard computer!: builds a simple computer from basic logic chips: clock, registers, arithmetic unit, RAM, program counter, control logic. By the end, the "fetch, decode, execute" cycle stops being a textbook phrase.
• Build a 65c02-based computer from scratch: uses a real microprocessor and covers memory mapping, interrupts, a display, serial communication over RS232 and running classic software such as Wozmon and Microsoft BASIC.
• Digital electronics tutorial: the fundamentals underneath both builds.
• Networking tutorial: how bits travel over a wire and up through the network stack.
• Error detection: parity, checksums and CRCs explained from the ground up.

Recent uploads continue in the same style, including a breadboard digital clock series and videos on the classic SID sound chip.

Who it suits

University students taking computer organisation, digital logic or architecture courses will find that these videos make lectures click. It also suits self-taught developers who feel a gap in "how the machine works", and embedded or IoT learners. No prior electronics knowledge is needed for the 8-bit series, though patience is.

How to learn from it without getting stuck in tutorial loops

These videos are so satisfying that it is easy to watch the entire 8-bit series and retain little. To make it stick:

1. Watch one video, then draw the circuit or data path from memory before moving on.
2. If you can, build part of it. Even a clock module or a single register on a breadboard teaches more than hours of watching. A simulator works if you have no hardware.
3. Write a short summary of each component's job (what goes in, what comes out, what control signals it needs).
4. Follow up with a structured course: Nand to Tetris makes you build the whole stack yourself in software.

Pair it with on Sefism

• The CS core subjects roadmap and its cheat sheet place computer architecture alongside operating systems, networks and databases.
• The Embedded systems and IoT roadmap and cheat sheet are the next step if the hardware side hooks you.
• Crash Course Computer Science gives a lighter overview, and Computerphile adds short conceptual explainers.
• Modern Embedded Systems Programming continues into microcontroller programming.

Best for: anyone who wants to understand a computer from transistors and logic gates up to running real software.