Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts

2011-03-28

Primitive Electronics

One potential aim of this project is a 1 MIPS (minimum) core for Retro made without a microprocessor. That still may mean doing it with discretes, but I think it would be mighty interesting to invoke even more primitive hardware. The goal would be to make construction the whole system possible without controlled atmospheres (beyond those used in the creation of wire, circuit board material, etc.)

As such, today's links are:

2011-01-25

thought experiment

Transcript of a chat between Alan and me yesterday. Posted with his permission and edited to remove irrelevant elements.


Alan: I had an idea for a thought experiment I wanted to run by you.


me: Oo. Hit me.


Alan: You could get a bunch of rocks and a bucket,
and if all you were interested in doing was keep track of how many things you had at a particular moment,
it serves as a "computer."
similarly, if you want to do some arithmetic you can use an abacus, or for more complex math, a slide rule.


me: Not unlike counting on your fingers, but with the added benefit that it serves as a memory.


Alan: If you keep a notebook, you could even have a rudimentary storage medium, writing down equations and results.
What makes this situation unsatisfactory such that you want to build a computer?
Is there some minimum bound that those tools don't meet but your computer does?



2011-01-14

Design Tools

Most interestingly, there are circuit simulators:
Courtesy of wolfspraul and wpwrak in #qi-hardware on Freenode.