Here's a 4 channel OR gate

https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/texas-instruments/...

But my logic labs were also done on FPGAs.

"Kids these days" ;)

Yes, I think now it's mostly the 74AHC, 74ALVC, some 74ALS/74HC families (maybe others) Depends on the application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7400-series_integrated_circuit...

(using the fpga is fine, but I'd probably want to focus on the circuit itself ant not something like VHDL at first)

To be clear, this was a 200-level EE class that was, at the time, also part of the CS curriculum. One of my favorite classes, at least in retrospect.

The professor was simultaneously the founder of a company that made FPGA boards for EE students. They also made a little microcontroller board that was basically Arduino before Arduino; we used that in another class where we made robots and programmed them in AVR assembly.

They're still used sometimes for low level ancillary board functionality. Like, controlling reset lines going to SoC's, etc.

It's actually something that an EE may end up using in their career quite often if they're doing board design.

Though, we normally use CPLDs for that kind of stuff now, but if you can get away with a few logic chips, maybe it can simplify the design.

BTW these hardware glue logic is often done with e.g. TI LittleLogic series (i.e. 74LVC1/2Gxx) where you can use a tiny package for a tiny function otherwise not integrated into big chips.