The FIBIAC — a 3D-Printed Electromechanical Computer 42
Brietech writes "'Behold the FIBIAC! It's loud! It computes! It uses actual punch cards!' The FIBIAC is a simple, stepper-motor based, (mostly) 3D-printed electromechanical computer. The program is stored on a loop of paper punch-cards, and the machine uses three, 3-digit electromechanical counters for storage (which could be expanded to support more complicated programs) Watch a video of it computing the Fibonacci sequence, or jump on Thingiverse and build your own."
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How about printing every single instance of the spam on 24-pound bond paper and then make the spammer eat it? We could be generous and make the rate of consumption, say, one page every minute? Do we pre-shred it for him or make him fully masticate it? He'll have an entire minute to chew and swallow, after all.
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Nope, that's digest mode!
Wow, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! (Score:5, Funny)
But does it run Linux?
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maybe if you wrote a emulator for that 8 bit risc processor that emulated the arm running linux (http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/04/02/191203/gnulinux-running-on-an-8-bit-processor). but if that was slow this would be monstrously so but it would be the ultimate geek cred
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To be fair, it doesn't actually make use of a CNC mill (and the 3D printer in the video is clearly a Makerbot Thing-o-matic).
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Sure, build your own. All you need is a 3D printer (required quality unknown), a laser cutter (no problem, I have two in the garage; snerk), CNC mill (also have a couple of these laying around), and who knows what else.
Simple, real simple.
Wow... So building stuff requires tools.. Who knew..
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Video is kind of disappointing (Score:2)
This thing is cool and all, don't get me wrong, but the video was a bit of a letdown. Very quiet (when the blog states one goal was "Have lots of moving parts (preferably loud ones)", and not a very good show of how it actually works. It didn't even use 2/3rds of the "digits" - the video stops after reaching 8, so only the first digit of each register was used.
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Imagine two Beowulf clusters of these, running in parallel.
Does this mean... (Score:2)
Boy, that Hertz (Score:2)
So how many gigaHertz is that CPU? What's its TDP? If I water-cool it can I overclock it?
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it's .000000001 GHz. TDP is something low. No.
Self-replication (Score:4, Interesting)
a loop of paper punch-cards (Score:3)
...why not punch tape?
I still have some from when I was a little boy and my parents brought home their used mylar gold/metallic green tape, and we made Christmas tree chains.
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Cute, but... (Score:3)
Will it blend?
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Not sure it will blend, but at least it will shred [kickstarter.com].
Steampunk (Score:2)
This is badly crying out to be a brass and mahogany Steampunk project.
Credibility (Score:2)
Who is going to believe the output of a machine named FIBIAC?