[GTALUG] OT: From Nand to Tetris MOOC

Alvin Starr alvin at netvel.net
Tue Mar 22 20:13:46 UTC 2016


On 03/22/2016 03:37 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> | From: Alvin Starr <alvin at netvel.net>
>
> | Or you could try this
> | https://archive.org/details/howtobuildaworkingdigitalcomputer_jun67
> | They has this book in my high-school library and it sort of got me hooked.
>
> That book is pretty misleading.
well...
the first computers looked like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

One could say that the first digital computer was a bad mathematician
who needed to use his fingers.

(please groan here)

The thing I like about the book and the project is that it is something
that is build-able in any number of homes without a whole lot of skill
or tools.
It teaches the fundamentals of boolean logic and how a modern computer
is built but just a few million times smaller.


>
> It produces a box with lights.  And electric combinatorial circuits to
> do adding or subracting of 4-bit numbers (as far as I can tell).  And
> switches for memory.
Well some of the first computers did not have much in the way of memory
either.
I do not believe that memory is a requirement for a computer but your
point is valid its hard to think of a functional computer without memory.

>
> You, the operator, must execute the program.  And choose the memory
> locations.  And load or store values.  Etc.


Yep. Its not fast.

>
> (In about 1963, I built very limited adder with similar technology.  I 
> even made the switches myself.  Very crude.  I kept asking adults "what is 
> a computer?" because I didn't know if I'd built one.  None of them had 
> answers.  How much easier this would have been if there had been the 
> internet.)

Well if people like you did not build the crude switch based computers
and then  graduate to bigger and better computers, we would not have the
internet.



-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   voice: (905)513-7688
Netvel Inc.                   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
alvin at netvel.net              ||




More information about the talk mailing list