Why 74xx parts, other than nostalgia for an era that was over decades before he was born?
If it's about building physical things rather than virtual things, consider Lego Mindstorms controllers; you can build digital logic in them using Scratch...and graduate to Python when he gets frustrated with the limitations. And there's tons of Minecraft-themed Lego contraptions, he could theoretically use Mindstorms logic, lights, and actuators to build Redstone logic!
74xx parts are real physical objects you can handle in your hands. You don't need to use a computer at all with them (though I often use an Arduino together with them)
I'm kinda clumsy but I get a lot of pleasure out of breadboarding with 74xx parts.
I agree that they could have worded that sentence more nicely, but "gatekeeping" isn't the automatic opposite of "charming and polite", nor does it describe any and all negative feedback. It's a specific term with, you know, meaning.
Not just made, but actively innovated upon. Discrete logic families even just for use as glue logic are never going anywhere. Currently a great (and very modern) choice is LVC for availability, speed, and compatibility with both 3.3 V and 5 V logic (some able to go down to 1.8 V?)
If logic ICs don’t appeal, maybe he’d be interested in relay logic? There’s something super satisfying about a totally electromechanical contraption clunking away and ‘thinking’.
Counter, decoder, resistor ladder, op-amp per color channel and you have component video. I am not sure how I could generate the timing info. I suppose there is much higher freq parts, one could do direct digital synthesis.
because that kind of system competes with Raspberry Pi which puts a lot of downward pressure on what is an "acceptable" price.
Real 8-bitters used custom chips for their display controllers, but if you don't use custom chips you need a few handfuls of logic chips and you wind up with something about as expensive as the video card linked to above. To justify a custom chip you need big volume. You can make a display controller from an FPGA or Microcontroller, it's probably cheaper than one made from small chips, but still not cheap enough... And there's something absurd about using a much more powerful part than the CPU to run the display.
I don't know why people have this nostalgia, my first PCB was basically nothing but SMT components with just a handful of through hole components for things like connectors.
