So, as promised, about a month later, the second video in my series of videos explaining how computers work from the ground up.
And I mean truly, the ground up; on a breadboard next to me I have a working 1-bit adder circuit made entirely out of 10KΩ resistors, 2N3904 transistors, a few LEDs and 330Ω resistors, and a few switches to demonstrate how it works. Of course once we get passed flip flops and tri-state gates I may not have enough transistors sitting around the house (or enough breadboard space) to actually wire these things up…
I’ve also created a separate channel for all of these videos, and have a playlist of my introduction videos. Once a month (give or take) I hope to add future videos that continue down this path until we have something that conceptually works.
Now as a footnote, the reason why the hands-on stuff is important to me goes to my finding an error in the first video, which caused me to rush out a new version of the first video in the series.
That’s because when I used the logic gates from the first video–well, nothing worked. And they didn’t work for reasons I explain in the re-cut video linked below.
I think it’s important to note all this, in large part because science.
Remember: the difference between science and screwing around is that in science, we document our results. And we confess our mistakes when we make them.
So here’s the first video in the series–re-edited and re-uploaded.
The Hacking Den 