Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A flip-flop is one of the most basic digital electronic circuits. It can most easily be built from just two transistors, although they can and have been built out of vacuum tubes, NAND and NOR gates, and Minecraft redstone. Conventional wisdom says you can't build a flip-flop with just one transistor, but here we are. [roelh] has built a flip-flop circuit using only one transistor and some bizarre logic that's been slowly developing over on hackaday.io.
[...] The single-transistor flip-flop works just like any other flip-flop — there are set and reset pulses, and a feedback loop to keep the whatever state the output is in alive. The key difference here is the addition of a clock signal. This clock, along with a few capacitors and a pair of diodes, give this single transistor the ability to store a single bit of information, just like any other flip-flop.
That's damned nifty.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/04/18/the-one-transistor-flip-flop/
(Score: 1, Troll) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday April 19 2018, @05:26PM
So if I have exactly one transistor I can make a flip-flop? No, I need 1 transistor, 1 diode, 1 cap, and 1 clock signal.
So if I have exactly two transistors can I make a flip-flop? Yes, yes I can, with only two transistors.
How many components does it take to make a 1 transistor flip-flop? At least 4.
How many components does it take to make a 2 transistor flip-flop? 2.
Is that a single transistor flip-flop? No
This is clever but very poorly named and takes itself way too seriously.
I hate hackaday.