The only one
that does anything is the one feeding the gate whose
output is low.
Yeah -- I see that. Release a button and the circuit goes into an
unstable state.
Actually, _press_ it and that happens - it happens as soon as the input
driving the distinguished gate goes low.
I wonder what the smallest number of active devices is
for an
n-stable circult with n greater than 2.
Well, you can do a tristable circuit with three _four_-input NANDs.
Cross-couple them, each output driving an input on each other gate;
then, each button drives an input on all but one of the gates.
For example, let the inputs be inA, inB, inC, and the outputs outA,
outB, outC. Then set up
outA = NAND(outB,outC,inB,inC)
outB = NAND(outC,outA,inC,inA)
outC = NAND(outA,outB,inA,inB)
For an N-stable circuit, this technique requires 2*(N-1) inputs on each
gate. For a bistable, or even a tristable, this is tolerable; for an
8-stable, it requires eight 14-input NANDs. You could do it with
8*14=112 diodes (hmm, might need another 8) and a relatively small
handful of resistors and transistors. Doing it with just TTL would
be..somewhat inconvenient.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B