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Mechanical CPU Clock

Posted by Soulskill on from the time-flies-when-you're-watching-ALUs-flipflop dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I designed this CPU clock to help people learn about how a CPU works. The Mechanical CPU Clock shows the basic building blocks of a CPU (ALU, buses, RAM, registers, and a Control Unit). It executes a set of instructions which will emulate a simple wall clock. A detailed build/explanation is available on instructables.com."

2 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Put This on Slashdot TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    YES!!! Yes Yes yes! Perfect example! Mods, pay attention!

  2. Re:Nice! But confused about writeup: by lelazary · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are right. The [inc A, if A11 then IP=0 else IP=1] is actually one instruction that was optimised after the first prototype. Originally I had these as separate registers with three other flip flops at the top for the program counter. However, I noticed that I can remove that (which made the clock simpler and more compact) if I combined both instructions together and only use one ball drop for the inc and check. I would love to figure out other ways of explaining this to people who don't even know there is a CPU in a computer. So any suggestions are welcome.