I think what Scott is proposing is not a duplication of the old circuit,
which is certainly wildly impractical. He is suggesting something more
along the line of seriously impractical. Threre are general prupose
processors and other animals of the silicon variety that become the
dedicated processors that run an amazing assortment of everyday
electro-mechanical devices, cars. toasters, air conditioners,
microwaves, etc., etc. through the use of firmware often directly in
on-board ROM, so there is only one chip. What I understand Scott to be
suggesting is programming such a beast to duplicate all the I/O
functions of the 4T curcuit. The whole thing could be much smaller and
would be much cheaper to produce than a replica board.
Back in the '70s, I conceived of, helped design and had built, a series
of rear projection systems. They used 4x5 slides to produce 6x7 foot
images, with 3 magnifications. At the higher magnifications, a joystick
moved the image around on the screen to view the desired area(s). To do
that, they moved the slide holder mechanism physically up and down to 3
detents, back and forth continuously and rotated a lens turret above
them. So there were lots of motors, solenoids, switches and multi turn
pots moving things, detenting things, reporting continuous positions,
etc. All of this was controlled using descrete TTL* chips. I can't
remember for sure just now, although I have pictures somewhere, but I
recall 12 separate circuit boards, maybe 4x12 inches, each with multiple
leds and adjustment screws on the ends to run all this. A few years
later, it could all have been done on one board with one CPU and a few
support chips.
Moose
*Transistor-transistor Logic, not the camera exposure system type.
John Hermanson wrote:
>Double sided flex board which makes it's way through the body, folded back
>on itself, with 3 or 4 proprietary Sharp ICs embedded under potting? It's
>safe to say no one else is going to be making them.
>
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