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posted by LaminatorX on Friday August 22 2014, @04:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the fractal dept.

According to this article on c|net:

Two … users have now revealed functioning hard drives built inside Minecraft that can read and write data. The first, created by Reddit and Imgur user smellystring can store 1KB [sic] of data, while a second, larger unit created by The0JJ can store 4KB [sic] of data.

"One day we will build a full computer in Minecraft, then play Minecraft on it. then the universe will crash," writes Imgur user mkat10z. Turns out, someone has already done that, creating a 2D platformer version of Minecraft that you play within Minecraft on a redstone computer.

UPDATE: It appears the referenced article was in error; the actual capacities should be in kilobits.

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  • (Score: 1) by toygeek on Friday August 22 2014, @04:45AM

    by toygeek (28) on Friday August 22 2014, @04:45AM (#84225) Homepage

    The redstone computer was not a contraption built in vanilla minecraft. I believe it was done with a mod called "ComputerCraft" which adds computers that can be programmed in Lua, rather than the computer components thusly built with only plain redstone.

    --
    There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
  • (Score: 2) by nukkel on Friday August 22 2014, @05:35AM

    by nukkel (168) on Friday August 22 2014, @05:35AM (#84231)

    The second one is 4kb (actually 4kib if you insist), not 4kB.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 22 2014, @05:41AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday August 22 2014, @05:41AM (#84235) Journal

      In other words, just enough space for the boot sector.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday August 22 2014, @09:17AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday August 22 2014, @09:17AM (#84282) Journal

        Bah in my day we had the entire OS [oldcomputers.net] running in 1.5Kb ROM! You kids with your reading AND writing data...spoiled is what you are!

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 2) by stderr on Friday August 22 2014, @07:36AM

      by stderr (11) on Friday August 22 2014, @07:36AM (#84258) Journal

      The error is also in the original article, which is a bit odd cause the imgur page [imgur.com] clearly says 256 positions with 16 bits at each position.

      I wonder if cnet got the size of the other "hard drive" wrong too or if the "small" one is actually larger than the "large" one.

      --
      alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" # ... and get off my lawn!
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 22 2014, @07:59AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday August 22 2014, @07:59AM (#84264) Journal

        If I understand the structure correctly, and didn't miscount, the small one has 120 bytes (there's always a full 8-bit byte in a line), which makes 960 bits; however, it seems odd that he'd have the main structure would be repeated 15 instead of 16 times (that main structure contains 8 bytes, from my understanding), so I guess I've made a mistake somewhere in my counting/interpretation and there's indeed 128 bytes, or 1024 bits.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by drussell on Friday August 22 2014, @07:46AM

    by drussell (2678) on Friday August 22 2014, @07:46AM (#84260) Journal

    I'd love to see someone implement a virtual version of my 80 megabyte (with 256 byte sectors, 96 unformatted) Control Data model 9448 ("Phoenix") Cartridge Module Drive. Somebody, somewhere out there must have some sort of service manual with the schematics for all the boards in that sucker! :)

    That beast pretty much needs it's own dedicated 15A circuit and shakes the whole room when it seeks (it IS a 14" hard disk after all!) but it's FAST for being manufactured Dec 31 1980 (the 55ms average seek from it's servo controlled voice coil puts early 8" and 5.25" hard disks to shame!)

  • (Score: 1) by NoMaster on Friday August 22 2014, @10:26AM

    by NoMaster (3543) on Friday August 22 2014, @10:26AM (#84300)

    I can't help but think an SSD or Flash drive would have been both more up-to-date and much simpler to implement.

    Also makes me wonder if you couldn't implement a SPI buss in Railroad Tycoon...

    --
    Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
  • (Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday August 22 2014, @01:24PM

    by morgauxo (2082) on Friday August 22 2014, @01:24PM (#84325)

    Imagine if all this time and energy was being expended creating things here in the real world...

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @01:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @01:52PM (#84337)

      Yeah screw all that learning how stuff works on the cheap.... Lets make them bust out all the parts and do it for real. You do realize *MOST* hardware design is done in 'virtual space' before they solder one diode to something else...

      Part of the 'hacker'/make ethos is to take something and turn it into something else. You may not see the value. But they do and it is their time to 'waste'. If minecrafts FPS view did not make me queezy I would so be in there trying some of this stuff out...

      • (Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:17PM

        by morgauxo (2082) on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:17PM (#85844)

        I'm sorry, you are right! Minecraft is a perfect simulator to learn on. What was I thinking? My thoughts would have doomed the whole real-world redstone mining industry!

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday August 22 2014, @01:33PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 22 2014, @01:33PM (#84329)

    I lurk at ORE Open Redstone Engineers

    http://openredstone.org/ [openredstone.org]

    This drive is their kind of thing although I don't lurk enough to know if the drive maker is in ORE. He probably should be. Or if not he almost certainly knows of / lurks ORE.

    ORE has a nice youtube channel at

    https://www.youtube.com/user/OpenRedstone/ [youtube.com]

    Personally I think computers in minecraft is "old" the only new thing is the news coverage. Now the 3-d printer in minecraft is new-er and more interesting.

    Something I don't like about the ORE guys is they're using 50s era comp sci. I have the knowledge but not the patience to make a modern multiplication algo multiplier, like the ones in a pentium etc. Or implement floating point. Minecraft guys tend to implement brute force like you'd see in 1950s-1960s era retrocomputing.

    Implement a Wallace or Dadda multiplier, or even just a look ahead carry unit adder, then I'll be impressed. Then again brute force is easier to debug.

    As discussed on HN a couple days back, if someone wrote a Verilog/VHDL to minecraft compiler, that would be fairly insane.

    ORE is hardly the only font of minecraft engineering knowledge nor should it be. It would be interesting to hear of any other communities.

    Its been a long time and a lot of tech since the first time I was utterly amazed at a mere automated chicken factory.

    Personally my engineering tends more themodynamic and I make vast steam power plants with turbines and boilers and multifarms to make wood to power the boilers, all as automated as possible. Then I inevitably have no idea what to do with all that energy. To each their own. I donno of any thermodynamic engineer groups analogous to ORE. That would be interesting to know about. I know there's lots of lone wolfs doing weird atomic reactor stuff but I find the woodlot and creosote plants more aesthetically appealing.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday August 23 2014, @12:12AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday August 23 2014, @12:12AM (#84538) Homepage

    Someone had already built a 4-bit (I think?) computer years ago in Minecraft. By comparison, building a storage device is much easier, though tedious perhaps. A computer performs lots of complex operations, whereas data storage is just anything that can retain state (flip flops) and a huge mux/demux.

    Although keep in mind, the nature of computation (the so-called computer science) is such that you can build a Turing complete computer out of only NAND gates or NOR gates. Redstone in Minecraft is more than sufficient for this, as are the dwarves and mechanisms in Dwarf Fortress. Personally, I'm waiting for someone to build a full computer out of ant farms.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday August 23 2014, @12:16AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday August 23 2014, @12:16AM (#84540)

    13th floor...

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek