One sentence describing what this is and why you built it.
Computer Engineering was a Northwestern CTD course centered on building a replica of the Apple I from the ground up. It gave me a tangible way to see how software becomes hardware behavior, from the processor and memory to input, output, and the logic that connects them.
I assembled and tested the computer through hands-on labs, then wrote low-level programs in 65C02 assembly. The work covered output, LCD control, interrupts, hexadecimal values, and keyboard-style input, with every program accounting for memory addresses, registers, flags, and exact processor instructions.
"I learned what is actually happening underneath the code."
During the build, I designed the address-decoding logic using NAND gates to handle the active-low chip selects. I also built physical LED test rigs to verify logic states and prevent bus contention before final assembly.
This project changed how I think about software. Even when I am working in SwiftUI or Python now, I think more carefully about data, state, and what the computer actually has to do to turn an idea into something visible and interactive.