There is one born every minute I drank the KoolAid

[rstofer]

When you get into diodes and transistors, try  messing around with Diode-Transistor-Logic.  This was a common logic family in the early '70s.  The whole chip thing started with Resistor-Transistor-Logic (RTL), moved to Diode-Transistor-Logic (DTL) and eventually settled at Transistor-Transistor-Logic (TTL) with a side excursion to Emitter-Coupled-Logic (ECL).

Build up the NAND and NOR gates given in this page:

https://electronicspani.com/diode-transistor-logic-gate/

Entire computer systems (mainframes) were built on DTL.  Thousands and thousands of 1N914 diodes.  For the circuits presented, 1N914A or 1N4148 diodes would be appropriate and the 2N2222A transistor should work fine.

The reason for the transistor is to restore the logic levels.  As you add more and more logic in series, the diode voltage drops would tend to accumulate.  Adding the transistor implied doing an inversion and the most common gates were (and still are) NAND and NOR.

I'm going to toss out 'product of sums' and 'sum of products' as these relate directly to NOR and NAND logic but I'm going to leave the homework to interested readers.  I'll also mention that Boolean Algebra is all about how to get to one form or the other.  I'll also mention that my only interest in EE school was digital systems...