This is really beautiful. Radraksha Vegad (Pargrahi) from India built a discrete component version of the venerable 555 timer chip. He built it on wooden blocks. This leads to the kind of understanding that even Jean Shepherd would have admired. No longer is the 555 a little mysterious black box. No, Pargrahi shows us how it works.
I know we could do something similar with the NE602 or the LM386. But probably not with an Arduino microcontroller or an Si5351. And that says something about understanding and complexity.
Thanks Radraksha. And thanks to Hack-A-Day for alerting us to this: https://hackaday.com/2021/12/20/all-hail-your-new-giant-555-timer-overlord/#more-512230
Here's a link to a 555 built really old school - Yes - Vacuum Tubes. The video shows its operation as well as construction. A fun view...
ReplyDeletehttps://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=vacuum+tube+555&type=E211US0G0#id=1&vid=7d2d2f5135593ccebfb6e6c726752c68&action=click
--But probably not with an Arduino microcontroller or an Si5351. And that says something about understanding and complexity. --
ReplyDeleteOf course you can do it, its just impractical to do so at a discrete component level because of the number of components. However if one was inclined they could reinvent the wheel in FPGA, or take the time to understand at a fundamental level the circuitry that makes up a micro controller.
James Newman build a computer using 40,000 discrete transistors. It was faster than an 8086 and cost about $50,000 US
I remember going to a lecture given by a NASA consultant at an IC test conference. He built a gate level hardware fault simulator for the RCA 1802 processor. The "faults" in question were provided by mechanical switches at each node of the circuit that could be shorted high or low. It was an amazingly complex undertaking for a relatively simple microprocessor.
ReplyDeleteBut the punchline was something to the effect of: why bother to do all this ? Because our customer returns come in the form of fireballs !
In other words, for NASA things had to be made as perfect as possible including the test patterns they used for microprocessor chips.