At 15:42 -0500 10/16/07, Brent wrote:
Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany)
"computer"/(switching)-logic
trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack
marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s.
...and you have just reminded me of the name (see subject). I
had one too. <google> ... ah.
http://oldcomputermuseum.com/logix_kosmos.html
Power supply, 10 bulbs across the top, 10 slides, each slide
opened or closed 5 sets of contacts (functioning as a 5PDT switch),
and a pushbutton. Each contact had 3 holes, as did the power supply
and the lights. By placing jumper wires, you enabled "gates" to
Ah yes, I had one of those.The main problem was the lamp socksts, they
were formed by running wires through the plastic chassis moulding, one
under each (MES cap) lamp to touch the base contact, one acoss the hole
to hopefully engage the thread on the cap. Needless to say bad contacts
wrre very common, In the end I got some real bulbholders and wired those in.
create the logic. You'd slide the slides to
generate the input, then
press the pushbutton to provide current. The lights would illuminate
IIRC, you didn't _have_ to use the button. It was just wired to 2
contacts on the panel. The lamps were wired with one side of each to a
speparate contact on the panel, the other side of the lamps were
connected together and to one side of the battery (3 C cells IIRC), the
other side of the battery went to a contact on the panel. Thus connecting
that battery contact to one of the lamp contacts -- via the switch array
-- caused that lamp to light.
to generate the output. There were paper fold-ups to
place inside the
light housing so that the output could be pictographic, and to slide
into a holder to label the slides.
It's more or less the next step up from the "Digi-Comp" (3
bits -> 10 bits), except that it can't affect its own state. But you
could implement "feedback" manually, by sliding slides when the bulb
above them was illuminated.
I quite clearly remember watching the Star Trek episode where
Spock determines that the Enterprise's computer has been tampered
with by beating it at chess, and thinking it'd take some pretty hot
wiring to get the Logix-Cosmos to play chess, so I'd better get
started. I never did figure out how to make the overlays work...
There was patchin diagrm in the manual for something called 'mini-chess'.
IiIRC it was played on a 4*4 board with very modified rules from normal
chess (the one I rememebr was that the king couldn't move, so 'check' was
the same as 'checkmate'.
Mine died of corrosion on the contacts, and was
(regrettably)
trashed, I'm pretty sure.
I know I still have mine, But don't expect me to be able to find it!
-tony