5 ms·

one of the good things about a formal CS education (well, mine anyhow) is that they force you to do things like write in assembly. obviously there's far less im

by bgruber 13y ago

one of the good things about a formal CS education (well, mine anyhow) is that they force you to do things like write in assembly. obviously there's far less immediate practical application these days, but the exercise is definitely valuable, and probably not something I would have done voluntarily. Actually, it feels like something I would have thought sounded cool, tried, and then given up on when it got annoying.

tomjen3 13y ago
We had to make adders, flip-flops, etc (on paper, not physically) and those were used to build an ALU and (I think) a memory-switch bank. It was very cool to know that when the world ends I can build a new computer, from scratch.
- kragen 13y ago
  What are you going to make the logic devices from? I've speculated about this extensively in http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2010-June/000919.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2010-June/00... but I still don't have a working scratch-built computer.
  - reeses 13y ago
    You can make transistors with some...hazardous components, but you may want to start with relays or tubes and resistors (which could, theoretically, just be varying lengths/guages of wire) and build NAND gates. It would be big, hot, noisy, slow, and a huge waste of your time, but there were computers before semiconductors.
    - Someone 13y ago
      For the curious: here's how you make your own tubes from glass, metal wire and metal sheets: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw.
    - kragen 13y ago
      In a practical apocalypse, you might be able to recover transistors from garbage dumps, too.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE) for transistors, but it feels like cheating. Relays are doable from scratch (mining and refining copper; winding coils, etc etc) but it's going to be pretty hard work and you're going to have a very slow computer at the end of it.
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    I was planing on going the relay/vaccume tube route.

by bgruber 13y ago

tomjen3 13y ago

We had to make adders, flip-flops, etc (on paper, not physically) and those were used to build an ALU and (I think) a memory-switch bank. It was very cool to know that when the world ends I can build a new computer, from scratch.

kragen 13y ago
What are you going to make the logic devices from? I've speculated about this extensively in http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2010-June/000919.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2010-June/00... but I still don't have a working scratch-built computer.
- reeses 13y ago
  You can make transistors with some...hazardous components, but you may want to start with relays or tubes and resistors (which could, theoretically, just be varying lengths/guages of wire) and build NAND gates. It would be big, hot, noisy, slow, and a huge waste of your time, but there were computers before semiconductors.
  - Someone 13y ago
    For the curious: here's how you make your own tubes from glass, metal wire and metal sheets: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw.
  - kragen 13y ago
    In a practical apocalypse, you might be able to recover transistors from garbage dumps, too.
- DanBC 13y ago
  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE) for transistors, but it feels like cheating. Relays are doable from scratch (mining and refining copper; winding coils, etc etc) but it's going to be pretty hard work and you're going to have a very slow computer at the end of it.
- tomjen3 13y ago
  I was planing on going the relay/vaccume tube route.