Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 10 submissions in the queue.
posted by LaminatorX on Sunday April 06 2014, @11:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the Domino! dept.

The simplest of calculating logic is based on a half-adder, from which a full adder with carry can be built. These are then chained together in modern computers to implement a full 32 or 64 bit addition. There have been some interesting ventures in to computing based on biological processes, but now a team has built three and four bit adders entirely of dominoes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpLU__bhu2w

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by francois.barbier on Sunday April 06 2014, @11:59AM

    by francois.barbier (651) on Sunday April 06 2014, @11:59AM (#27035)

    Another interesting mechanical one: Marble adding machine [youtube.com]

    • (Score: 1) by b on Sunday April 06 2014, @03:38PM

      by b (2121) on Sunday April 06 2014, @03:38PM (#27085)
      That's great! Also, coincidentally, one of the videos suggested by that one was this Lego domino row building machine [youtube.com].
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 06 2014, @05:08PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 06 2014, @05:08PM (#27110) Journal

        OK, so who now builds the marble computer controlled Lego domino computer builder?

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 02 2014, @06:20AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 02 2014, @06:20AM (#38769)

      7 million calls a year in japan about what makes this market in supermarkets, restaurants, because the japanese consumers in both houses, cars and homes stood deserted., free slots games play online [bestcasinoclubcom.com], [url="http://bestcasinoclubcom.com/"]free slots games play online[/url], :-PP,

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Sunday April 06 2014, @12:42PM

    by VLM (445) on Sunday April 06 2014, @12:42PM (#27044)

    You can do a decent full adder with two relays

    http://www.electronixandmore.com/projects/relaycom puter/index.html [electronixandmore.com]

    As you can see its all in the logic level specs, some making it more difficult, some less.

    Starting from something like that design I eventually built up a pretty decent bit slice ALU design using about two dozen relays per bit to provide microcontroller CPU level functionality. Not quite a bitslice 68000 or pdp11 but it was more capable than a 1802 or arguably a 6502. Less than a Z80 probably.

    At a Chinese import cost, I could implement 16 of those giving me a 16 bit CPU for well under a kilobuck, which is an affordable project. Obviously it would take an entire winter to wire and test, so it sounds expensive, but on an hourly basis its much cheaper than golf or watching movies or pretty much anything other than reading library books.

    Anyway much like the linked article I felt static ram for memory would be cheating and given the costs of latching relays, making memory out of relays is simply not affordable. So I never went forward with the project.

    Early computers were always like that. Making an adder sounds hard to a modern, but according to moderns, memory is cheap so don't even think about memory. However, the ratio of whats hard and easy is actually the other way around. Memory is much harder than a simple CPU. The hard part is affording/building enough memory to do something "interesting" not a simple adder which is like two relays per bit. Then you add two relays (or more) per buffer/latch and you'll need quite a few, and more than 1 or 2 relays per bit of RAM plus a latching relay for the bit itself, and suddenly that "2 relays per bit adder" starts looking like the cheap part of the project.

    There's scalability to large sizes but the learning experience is there's scalability to small sizes... so dynamic memory, perhaps based on electrolytic capacitors, doesn't scale to less than a K or so, because of the cost of the substantial switchgear required to implement refresh, what amounts to sense amps, etc.

    I was considering making some classic DTL flipflops to use as static ram for my relay based computer. Done in SMD for size and also its easier to build with SMD than surface mount (once you know how...) I could fit quite a few K of memory in a shoebox, relatively cheaply. That rapidly turns into a fan-in/fan-out puzzle to be solved in the circuitry connected to the FFs. Maybe some other decade. I was going to use optoisolators to connect the DTL memory to the relay based CPU. That of course rapidly degenerates into why not build an entire CPU using discrete transistors and DTL logic.

    As an example of a dedicated application specific large DTL system, I have no connection with these guys at all, other than admiring their product from a distance:

    http://www.transistorclock.com/ [transistorclock.com]

    Eventually all these discussions degenerate to reimplementing IBM's century old unit record equipment, poorly. Which would be kind of fun, assuming a source of punchcards. Which leads to weird ideas involving commercially available "index cards / note cards" and lots of metalworking and hacking around.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Dunbal on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:26PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:26PM (#27067)

    Gives a whole new meaning to the RunOnce registry key.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bugamn on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:29PM

    by bugamn (1017) on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:29PM (#27068)

    At about 7 minutes into the movie he starts showing how to implement dominoes logic gates.

    It seems that one of the biggest problems in this implementation is adjusting the circuit so the timing is right.

    I just wish they had a page with photos of the circuit and explanations.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Sunday April 06 2014, @03:30PM

    by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Sunday April 06 2014, @03:30PM (#27083) Homepage

    Here is the biocomputers article [wikipedia.org] that was in the original submission.

    --
    (Score:1^½, Radical)
    • (Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Sunday April 06 2014, @06:59PM

      by cubancigar11 (330) on Sunday April 06 2014, @06:59PM (#27140) Homepage Journal

      This is pretty neet. Even after the problem they had on day 2 it is so much cool and you can see a lot of kids get a lot excited about binary math. I think, mission accomplished!

  • (Score: 0) by fishybell on Sunday April 06 2014, @07:30PM

    by fishybell (3156) on Sunday April 06 2014, @07:30PM (#27147)

    A computer is only a computer if it computes correctly. The answer to 9 + 3 is not 30.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 06 2014, @07:52PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 06 2014, @07:52PM (#27151) Journal

      A computer is only a computer if it computes correctly.

      So you say computers with certain Pentium processors were no computers?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by mendax on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:10PM

    by mendax (2840) on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:10PM (#27169)

    And I always thought that an adder was a snake. And there is that pesky Blackadder.

    Go ahead, mod me down!

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
    • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:18PM

      by jimshatt (978) on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:18PM (#27175) Journal
      Shut up Baldrick. I have an even more cunning plan! Instead of modding you down, I'll just comment, and then get modded down myself!
  • (Score: 1) by ChocolateTeacup on Monday April 07 2014, @07:37AM

    by ChocolateTeacup (1121) <chrispza@yahoo.co.uk> on Monday April 07 2014, @07:37AM (#27318)

    in the classical sense. But a lot easier to troubleshoot than squinting at a 'scope.

    BTW, Anyone remember modelling logic in Life?

    (http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~aadamatz/compiled.htm}