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How computers work. Build a 4 bit adder from dominos. — Parallax Forums

How computers work. Build a 4 bit adder from dominos.

Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
edited 2014-04-28 16:41 in General Discussion
Wonderful explanation of how digital logic and computers work. With examples built out of dominos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNuPy-r1GuQ

and 10,000 domino 4 bit adder in action here:

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

Who needs electronics?

Comments

  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2014-04-27 09:12
    I read this and saw pizzas
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-04-27 09:40
    Braino,
    I read this and saw pizzas

    Don't you love the way advertising works? I sometimes wish there were a death penalty for damaging peoples brains that way.

    Building a half adder out of pizzas, or pizza companies, might be a challenge.

    Edit: Maybe I should remove the capitalization.
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2014-04-27 10:05
    Heater. wrote: »
    Building a half adder out of pizzas

    For some reason, I now feel purpose in my life!! :lol:
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-04-27 10:23
    mindrobots,
    For some reason, I now feel purpose in my life!!
    We look forward to the video :)
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    edited 2014-04-27 21:00
    prof_braino wrote: »
    I read this and saw pizzas

    My first thought as well.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-04-27 22:44
    I despair. Bunch of geeks and a maths prof. build the worlds first calculator out of dominos, ten thousand of them for goodness sake, and all we get here is pizza comments :(

    Me, I'm thinking of writing a domino circuit simulator. Where you can draw your own lines of dominos and play around with different circuits.
  • TubularTubular Posts: 4,703
    edited 2014-04-27 23:55
    You know, a domino simulator wouldn't be bad on a P2 (cordic, hi resolution)...
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-04-28 00:39
    Ah, well I had not considered going to the whole 3D graphical visualization of thousands of dominos.

    But now that you mention it. One could use a physics engine to simulate the dynamics of block falling over and colliding and hook that up to a 3D renderer. Not even hard to do. However it would be a slow as hell.

    No, I just imagined modelling a network of connected "cells". Each cell gets inputs from it's neighbours indicating if they are standing or lying (and perhaps falling). From those inputs a cell can decide if it is to remain standing or fall down.

    In this way we can model the "ripple" of a line of falling dominos.

    However to make those logic gates cells have to model those connections where an input "stream" breaks another stream that is travelling perpendicularly. i.e. dominos are pushed over but in such a way that they don't pass a signal on to their normal neighbours in the stream.

    Then we provide a grid editor where people can drop their own dominos down and create their own circuits.
  • Mark_TMark_T Posts: 1,981
    edited 2014-04-28 11:40
    Domino simulator in Minecraft perhaps?
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2014-04-28 13:07
    OK, forgetting about the pizza......what an absolutely wonderful video!! (I love the domino delay line!!)

    I love when people do things like this to explain the basic simplicity of computers and all this bloat is built upon!

    ...and yes, for the domino logic simulator!
  • ElectrodudeElectrodude Posts: 1,658
    edited 2014-04-28 14:27
    Mark_T wrote: »
    Domino simulator in Minecraft perhaps?
    Don't encourage me. (spends next 3 weeks writing domino mod)
    Heater. wrote: »
    But now that you mention it. One could use a physics engine to simulate the dynamics of block falling over and colliding and hook that up to a 3D renderer. Not even hard to do. However it would be a slow as hell.

    You could make it way faster by only doing physics for dominoes that have other nearby falling dominoes. I'm pretty sure Bullet Physics knows how to do this (sleeping objects).
  • TubularTubular Posts: 4,703
    edited 2014-04-28 15:49
    Perhaps OzPropDev could update "Cordic Bugz" to "Cordic Beez", where each bug, when bitten, jumps forward (on whatever angle) and bites the bug in front, then promptly dies
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    edited 2014-04-28 16:28
    Shame it's a one-shot adder ;)
    We need a robot to reset the dominos after each addition :)
  • TubularTubular Posts: 4,703
    edited 2014-04-28 16:41
    Cluso99 wrote: »
    We need a robot to reset the dominos after each addition :)

    Well resetting dominoes is a job for a robot (or simulator) if ever there was one!...
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