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Home-Built Turing Machine

Posted by Soulskill on from the i'll-order-a-dozen dept.

stronghawk writes "The creator of the Nickel-O-Matic is back at it and has now built a Turing Machine from a Parallax Propeller chip-based controller, motors, a dry-erase marker and a non-infinite supply of shiny 35mm leader film. From his FAQ: 'While thinking about Turing machines I found that no one had ever actually built one, at least not one that looked like Turing's original concept (if someone does know of one, please let me know). There have been a few other physical Turing machines like the Logo of Doom, but none were immediately recognizable as Turing machines. As I am always looking for a new challenge, I set out to build what you see here.'"

4 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I'll tell you why - because the embrace Open Source Software. Nothing is more Open Source Software than building the hardware yourself, and this is *exactly* what terrifies Microsoft. Stuff like this chills them to the bone. All a Microsoftie could build from scratch would be a lightbulb connected to a battery, and even that probably wouldn't work properly and would be encumbered by DRM.

    1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      How could a relatively simple machine like this scare Microsoft? If people want to build their own hardware and write their own software, that's great. But the hardware won't get to the point of being as complex and portable as hardware made by the larger corporations because they have the money and facilities to design new technologies and optimize the older ones.

  2. Re:You're Doing It Wrong by spribyl · · Score: 1, Troll

    That was my thought as well, shouldn't the program and data be on the tape.

  3. Re:Setting aside the Turing stuff... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    The hardware is very elegant and well-done. The guy is a multi-talented geek of the highest order.

    The circuits wasn't very elegant. BTW, why are we in bold?