One-Bit Computing at 60 Hertz

http://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/One-bit%20computer/One-bit%20computer.html

by Tomte • 7 years ago

66 16 7 years ago

laughtonelectronics.com

floatingatoll• 7 years ago

If you find this circuit appealing to consider, Shenzhen I/O may be of interest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12660253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041538

I was reminded by the 4099 output -> input as a form of 'register', which is used in SI/O (and TIS-100).

gnulinux• 7 years ago

Agreed Shenzhen I/O is a very nice game. It's more of a 2-bit, 3-bit than just 1-bit (I think the first 2 microcontrollers are truly 1-bit but later ones are 2-bit, and you can store state in p registers) (also not quite bit as IO is analog) but your circuits look very similar to the one in OP. I bought it off of Steam when there was a sale and it was only $5; best $5 ever spent!

jacobush• 7 years ago

This is such genius. I actually understood how it works, but I think I would get a headache "programming" it.

Dr_Jefyll3• 7 years ago

I think I would get a headache "programming" it

One-bit creator here. I'm surprised by how often people make comments like this. Is it the dual jump destinations which seem so confusing? All you need is to ignore one of them, assuming you'll "fall through" instead. This is noted in the article. "instructions generally do tend to get stored in sequential order, and, as a matter of coding style, conditional branches very often do specify address+1 as one of the outcomes. The assembler makes it easy to use the familiar branch, else fall through to the instruction at address+1 arrangement. "

Thanks for posting, Tomte. This and other projects of mine have appeared on HN before.

Edit: but don't use HN's search to find Dr_Jefyll. That's an f there, not a k; but HN's search seemingly can't be convinced of this.

howardcurry3• 7 years ago

"Dr_Jefyll" works.

mbreese2• 7 years ago

I somewhat understand what's going on, but it might be helpful to have an example or two of what you actually used this for. Like... what kind of functions did you add to the printing press?

Is the tradeoff here if you use a "simple" 1-bit processor, you have to have more complex data/instructions? Meaning, because you only have 1-bit, there is a lot of jumping around. This means that for everything that you'd want to compute, you'd have to have the instruction flow in memory, instead of relying on more OP codes/instructions for the microprocessor?

This all sounds really interesting, but I'm having trouble completely wrapping my head around it.

kmill• 7 years ago

I'm glad someone posted this again, since a couple weeks ago I was trying to remember exactly how it worked! (Not for any particular purpose, but I had just remembered it being a nice design for a combinatorial feedback loop.)

kazinator• 7 years ago

The machine always jumps from one instruction to the next. It doesn't know how to "fall through" to the "next" address because it has no program counter and no ability to count (compute an increment).

That is very similar to the logic state sequencer designed by Wozniak for the Apple II disk drive controller.

bctnry• 7 years ago

It somehow reminds me of BitBitJump[1].

[1] https://esolangs.org/wiki/BitBitJump

One-Bit Computing at 60 Hertz

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