The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
9/24/2014
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Although there are many showcases of "redstone computers" on youtube, I have never seen any real evidence that what was built is actually a general purpose calculating machine.
Troubles: I have seen first hand several working components, such as half-adders, ALUs, seven segment displays, etc.
A real computing machine will be floating point. Can this even be accomplished in redstone?
And having done so, where is the I/O? Levers are fine - the PDP machines had toggles all over the place.
Now - anything that "computes" can be a computer. An ALU is a computer. So I have no doubt many redstone machines meet some minimal requirement for "computer" just as an ant can meet some minimal requirements for "conscious."
If you have built a computer, you will be able to run Unix on it, no?
It is my belief that the Wozniak era was the last in which a single man could understand fully all the systems in a computer.
Why are there no models of EDSAC or ENIAC for example?
Because! These old monsters are actually complicated machines. If one looks at the architecture of the Colussus for example, he will see something that redstone could never run, unless given years on a supercomputer (any Turing machine can run any program given the time).
Yes, they have been made before. Most ridiculous thing I have ever seen was somebody making a phone in Minecraft and ordering pizza, in real life, on that phone. How they accomplished this I will never understand.
The fastest fully functional computer I've seen is called the CHUNGUS 2. Completely vanilla redstone-based. It is fully operational as a computer, as you described it, but can also run games.
Link Here:
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Officer, please. If you really are what you eat, then I am an innocent man.
You referenced EDSAC citing it as complicated when in reality it is easily feasible. First of all the EDSAC has 14 instructions:
Add
Subtract
Multiply-and-add
AND-and-add (called "Collate")
Shift left
Arithmetic shift right
Load multiplier register
Store (and optionally clear) accumulator
Conditional goto
Read input tape
Print character
Round accumulator
No-op
Stop
whereas the CHUNGUS I (precursor to the CHUNGUS II) has 32 instructions:
No op
Halt
CPU settings
Port request
GPU function
Condition select
Set ALU mask
Random number
Add
Add immediate
Subtract
Subtract immediate
Barrel shift
Barrel shift by immediate
Count bits
Bitwise logic
Load immediate
Cache store
Cache load
Port store
Port load
Save to GPU reg
Save immediate to GPU reg
Branch if condition satisfied
Compare and branch
Subtract and branch if true
AND and branch if true
XOR and branch if true
Cache immediate
RAM store
RAM load
Instruction cache swap
EDSAC's clock speed is 666hz whereas when accelerated CHUNGUS II can reach 200,000hz, most of these referenced had no inbuilt memory. Also when you mention it would take years on a supercomputer to run, the main constraint is currently developed hardware. speed would be no longer than a few seconds per cycle.
Although there are many showcases of "redstone computers" on youtube, I have never seen any real evidence that what was built is actually a general purpose calculating machine.
Troubles: I have seen first hand several working components, such as half-adders, ALUs, seven segment displays, etc.
A real computing machine will be floating point. Can this even be accomplished in redstone?
And having done so, where is the I/O? Levers are fine - the PDP machines had toggles all over the place.
Now - anything that "computes" can be a computer. An ALU is a computer. So I have no doubt many redstone machines meet some minimal requirement for "computer" just as an ant can meet some minimal requirements for "conscious."
If you have built a computer, you will be able to run Unix on it, no?
It is my belief that the Wozniak era was the last in which a single man could understand fully all the systems in a computer.
Why are there no models of EDSAC or ENIAC for example?
Because! These old monsters are actually complicated machines. If one looks at the architecture of the Colussus for example, he will see something that redstone could never run, unless given years on a supercomputer (any Turing machine can run any program given the time).
Yes, they have been made before. Most ridiculous thing I have ever seen was somebody making a phone in Minecraft and ordering pizza, in real life, on that phone. How they accomplished this I will never understand.
It was a command block creation. Command blocks can even run NES games.
Technically you could build a computer and actually program in it, it would just take decades to make and would be extremely slow.
The fastest fully functional computer I've seen is called the CHUNGUS 2. Completely vanilla redstone-based. It is fully operational as a computer, as you described it, but can also run games.
Link Here:
Officer, please. If you really are what you eat, then I am an innocent man.
Floating points are just divisions by ten. It's no different doing it in redstone than you would in electronics.
•?((¯°·._.• Ќąţąȼℓɨ$ʍɨȼ •._.·°¯))؟•
rofl because who dosnt want to emulate unix through minecraft redstone circuitry?
silly people; thats who.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card
You referenced EDSAC citing it as complicated when in reality it is easily feasible. First of all the EDSAC has 14 instructions:
whereas the CHUNGUS I (precursor to the CHUNGUS II) has 32 instructions:
No op
Halt
CPU settings
Port request
GPU function
Condition select
Set ALU mask
Random number
Add
Add immediate
Subtract
Subtract immediate
Barrel shift
Barrel shift by immediate
Count bits
Bitwise logic
Load immediate
Cache store
Cache load
Port store
Port load
Save to GPU reg
Save immediate to GPU reg
Branch if condition satisfied
Compare and branch
Subtract and branch if true
AND and branch if true
XOR and branch if true
Cache immediate
RAM store
RAM load
Instruction cache swap
EDSAC's clock speed is 666hz whereas when accelerated CHUNGUS II can reach 200,000hz, most of these referenced had no inbuilt memory. Also when you mention it would take years on a supercomputer to run, the main constraint is currently developed hardware. speed would be no longer than a few seconds per cycle.