[PLUG-TALK] Anacronistic Computers

[Keith Lofstrom]

http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/index.html

The static RAM is cheating, but the paper tape storage that it 
replaces would require a lot more relays to build the sequencer.

Interestingly, my first professional design was a solid-state 
replacement for the relay logic in a Code-o-Phone answering machine,
which I designed during high school for an older friend who was a 
technician there.  The "solid state" design used about 16 logic
gates in four 14-pin integrated circuit packages.  

I bet this would make a great "Advanced Topics" presentation - if
we all pretend it is 1950!  Perhaps at a meeting where we all wear
slacks, black shoes, white shirts, black-rimmed glasses, and ties,
carry slide rules, and have three colors of ball pen in our pocket
protectors.  We could mutter about "those new-fangled tube computers"
and claim that Real Men (or honorary Real Men like Grace Hopper)
would never use gates they couldn't see operating!  How can you 
debug something if the bugs aren't real bugs?

And I wonder how many years this thing would need to boot into Linux?  

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs