21 Jan
2010
21 Jan
'10
9:32 p.m.
Hi Group,
After years and years of interest in this, way back to the sci am 'Ameteur
Scientist' articles, I am beginning this project.
I
have a unique and amazing resource, I work for a semiconductor company
in test engineering, and we use tons of those little TO-5 Teledyne
relays in our IC test boards. I have scavenged >1000 or so for the
project, so its not going to be a giant machine like Harry Porters:
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/
I
envision a small stack of cards, ALU, instruction decode, sequencer
like Harrys machine. There are a few other relay CPUs on the web, and
it looks like I will follow suit and use semiconductor RAM for program
storage. To be a purist, I suppose I should go core, and I have bought
an array or two off ebay, but the chances of me getting them up and
running right away are nil, but would be the next thing.
Code?
Well
I was thinking the whole thing will be small enough for a tabletop
game, like 3d tic tac toe or such, with a nice stacked up plexiglass of
the game board with red and green neon for the moves. Im anticipating
a nice click click click for the search as it examines the board,
shifts rotates, compares etc for the move checks. my CPU clock will
probably be 25 Hz or more, these little relays are fast. I found some
simple asm here:
http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/AsmTools/MASM/TicTacToe/ttt1_1.html
I welcome a conversation and dialog with any of similar interests in computing the hard
way...
Randy
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21 Jan
21 Jan
9:55 p.m.
Randy Dawson wrote:
Hi Group,
After years and years of interest in this, way back to the sci am 'Ameteur
Scientist' articles, I am beginning this project.
I
have a unique and amazing resource, I work for a semiconductor company
in test engineering, and we use tons of those little TO-5 Teledyne
relays in our IC test boards. I have scavenged>1000 or so for the
project, so its not going to be a giant machine like Harry Porters:
What about a ROBOT with a ELECTRONIC BRAIN?
I think Scientific American had a project book , 1965 ish with all sorts
of electro-mechanical things.
Ben.
23 Jan
23 Jan
2:45 a.m.
Randy Dawson wrote:
After years and years of interest in this, way back to
the sci am
'Ameteur Scientist' articles, I am beginning this project.
I have a unique and amazing resource, I work for a semiconductor
company in test engineering, and we use tons of those little TO-5
Teledyne relays in our IC test boards. I have scavenged >1000 or so
for the project, so its not going to be a giant machine like Harry
Porters:
Have you read "The Computer - My Life" by Konrad Zuse (New York:
Springer Verlag, 1993. ISBN 0-387-56453-5)? Mostly historical /
autobiographical, but some good technical bits on the evolution of relay
logic as Zuse's designs got more mature. Interesting how the number of
relays per bit he needed in his adder circuit got less and less...
Philip.
4:47 p.m.
Phillip,
Thanks for the lead on the book, and no I have not seen it.
The Harry Porter relay computer and others seem to all use Zuse 4PDT relay design for the
alu.
If you have not been to his web site, take a look at the youtube, It appears that there
are a lot of us relay computer guys out there (when the you tube finishes there are
related links presented).
Somewhat related, and also my interest, are the marble machines that do logic. Of course
there is the Edmund Scientific NIM plastic 3 bit machine, analog computers and dont forget
Martin Gardner and the deck of cards paper computers.
There is more to classic computing than collecting microprocessor based machines.
Thanks again,
Randy
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:45:57 +0000
From: philip at axeside.co.uk
To:
Subject: Re: starting my relay computer project
Randy Dawson wrote:
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Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390708/direct/01/
After years and years of interest in this, way
back to the sci am
'Ameteur Scientist' articles, I am beginning this project.
I have a unique and amazing resource, I work for a semiconductor
company in test engineering, and we use tons of those little TO-5
Teledyne relays in our IC test boards. I have scavenged >1000 or so
for the project, so its not going to be a giant machine like Harry
Porters:
Have you read "The Computer - My Life" by Konrad Zuse (New York:
Springer Verlag, 1993. ISBN 0-387-56453-5)? Mostly historical /
autobiographical, but some good technical bits on the evolution of relay
logic as Zuse's designs got more mature. Interesting how the number of
relays per bit he needed in his adder circuit got less and less...
Philip. 
6:13 p.m.
Randy Dawson wrote:
A relay computer is something I too would like to build if ever I were to come
across enough suitable relays.
A couple of years ago I fleshed out the Simon design and wrote it up, as well
as breadboarding a small portion of it.
(http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/index.html)
Ultimately, I felt it would be unsatisfying to implement it fully, due to it's
limitations.
Funny how the adder circuit keeps coming up, one of those perennial topics in
computing. I too worked on optimising it.
(http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/imp.html#ALU). Later I saw Zuse's
design and noted that I had -almost- arrived at the same design. The number of
contacts and basic circuit were identical, but I missed one final optimisation
of flipping some contacts in the sum circuit so the relays required would be
4-pole & 4-pole rather than 5 & 3 (the former tending to be a little more
practical in the real world, of course).
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:45:57 +0000
From: philip at axeside.co.uk
To:
Subject: Re: starting my relay computer project
Have you read "The Computer - My Life" by Konrad Zuse (New York:
Springer Verlag, 1993. ISBN 0-387-56453-5)? Mostly historical /
autobiographical, but some good technical bits on the evolution of relay
logic as Zuse's designs got more mature. Interesting how the number of
relays per bit he needed in his adder circuit got less and less...
Phillip,
Thanks for the lead on the book, and no I have not seen it.
The Harry Porter relay computer and others seem to all use Zuse 4PDT relay design for the
alu.
If you have not been to his web site, take a look at the youtube, It appears that there
are a lot of us relay computer guys out there (when the you tube finishes there are
related links presented).
Somewhat related, and also my interest, are the marble machines that do logic. Of course
there is the Edmund Scientific NIM plastic 3 bit machine, analog computers and dont forget
Martin Gardner and the deck of cards paper computers.
There is more to classic computing than collecting microprocessor based machines.
6:47 p.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
Funny how the adder circuit keeps coming up, one of
those perennial topics in
computing. I too worked on optimising it.
(http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/imp.html#ALU). Later I saw Zuse's
design and noted that I had -almost- arrived at the same design. The number of
contacts and basic circuit were identical, but I missed one final optimisation
of flipping some contacts in the sum circuit so the relays required would be
4-pole& 4-pole rather than 5& 3 (the former tending to be a little more
practical in the real world, of course).
What I found more amazing, was his mechanical memory/relays in the first
proto-type machines.
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~zuse/Konrad_Zuse/en/rechner_z1.html
24 Jan
24 Jan
8:04 a.m.
From: philip at axeside.co.uk
Have you read "The Computer - My Life" by Konrad Zuse (New York:
Springer Verlag, 1993. ISBN 0-387-56453-5)? Mostly historical /
autobiographical, but some good technical bits on the evolution of relay
logic as Zuse's designs got more mature. Interesting how the number of
relays per bit he needed in his adder circuit got less and less...
I always loved his vertually zero delay carry. At least
it was zero for relays. It was something that one
would not think of just looking at a single bit or
even normal logic of digital stuff.
Dwight
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6 comments
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participants (5)
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bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
philip＠axeside.co.uk -
rdawson16＠hotmail.com