
Harry Porter's Relay Computer - 0x12
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay
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sfaruque
This might sound a little odd, but am I the only one who originally read that
as Harry "Potter"?

Also, the video is quite nice!

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rbanffy
No. But I was wondering how an electromechanical computer would fit into that
particular fictional universe.

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amcintyre
I dimly recall trying to figure out how to make modern(ish) conveniences, like
flashlights or televisions, under D&D rules. An imaginative person (i.e., not
me) could probably use the "building technology on top of a magic-based world"
theme as the basis for some good stories.

Of course, there's probably some corollary of Rule 34 for fictional world-
building, meaning there's already thousands of books out there with this
theme. If anybody knows of some well-written ones, I'd be interested in having
some new (good) fiction to read.

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pjscott
The one that springs most immediately to mind is "Wizard's Bane" by Rick Cook,
which involves somebody making a programming language out of small spells
which could be used to make more complex ones, but the book wasn't actually
that good.

Much better written (and very popular) is "Harry Potter and the Methods of
Rationality", which you can find here:

[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

...Or in a variety of ebook formats from the author page.

Diane Duane's "Young Wizards" series never reveals much about the workings of
its magic system, but it's made pretty clear that using magic effectively is
mostly a matter of describing precisely what you want to happen, and closely
akin to engineering. They're good books, and I like the idea of non-mysterious
magic that you may have to debug before it works right.

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5hoom
Tech specs:

5Hz clock cycle.

8 general purpose registers.

32kb of memory.

19 instruction non pipelined architecture.

"not fast, but lights blink and it makes noise."

Respect :)

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Luc
Here's another one (smaller, but more messy!): <http://www.kilian-
leonhardt.de/relaiscomputer/pics/pic4.htm>

I also bought a neat little 4-bit relais computer from this person (Kilian
Leonhardt). It's got just enough program memory to do a multiplication
algorithm in.

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JoshTriplett
Having seen it in action in person, I found the sound quite astonishing. It
has noticeable patterns.

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JonnieCache
Rhythmically, it sounds _exactly_ like a hippie drum circle.

EDIT: To whomever downvoted me, I _like_ hippie drum circles.

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derleth
All together now:

    
    
         Load a word, to A, load a woord!
         Increment PC, incremeeent!
         Load the next opcooode, load it iiin!
         Oh, Loooord, now decooode!

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MrRadar
If you like this, check out Jon Stanley's similar but smaller Relay Computer
Two[1]. The page gives a highly detailed explanation of how it all works
including complete circuit and logic diagrams.

[1]:
[http://www.electronixandmore.com/project/relaycomputertwo/in...](http://www.electronixandmore.com/project/relaycomputertwo/index.html)

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0x12
The only part where he cheated as far as I can see is the memory, that's a
static RAM chip. All the rest of it is relays, it runs at 6(!) Hz.

The video is quite amazing.

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Achshar
damn i saw it and the potter fan inside me woke up, i clicked it and.. bummer.
but the vid was nice :)

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Cushman
The video is way cool-- makes me think of Intel's video for their 3D
transistor where they shrank (who?) down to transistor size to demo it.

Just imagine somebody shrunk to fit inside a CPU, giving _exactly the same
tour_.

