u/ArgumentOriginal9563

I’ve been building a development workbench for the Intel MCS‑4, mainly as a way to study and emulate the 4004 at a microarchitectural level. The goal isn’t to “use” an emulator, but to expose what’s normally hidden: bus transitions, register activity, timing edges, instruction sequencing, and I/O paths.

One component that might be relevant to this community is the toolchain:

• a small Basic‑style language I designed from scratch
• a transpiler that converts it into 4004 assembly
• and an execution/visualization layer that lets you step through the generated code while watching internal state changes

Here’s a walkthrough of the current state of the workbench (YouTube):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdGhhywR5es

I’d really appreciate feedback from people who have experience building emulators, debuggers, or microarchitecture visualizers.

Specifically:

• What debugging layers or instrumentation would you consider essential for a system like this?
• Are there analysis tools or views you’d expect in a 4004‑level emulator?
• Anything you think I should rethink in terms of architecture or workflow?

Hi! This GIF shows my Intel 4004 / MCS-4 prototype workflow (QuadBasic -> 4004 ASM -> run with visible CPU/bus state). I’d love feedback from retrocomputing folks on what tiny demo to show next (LCD, LED bar, switches, or printer).