Re:A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe (1989)
by jhbadger on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @07:01AM
(#39189096)
This in is a tradition of earlier simulated ("cardboard") computers such as the 1965 "Little Man Computer" or the 1968 CARDIAC. Like Ordinapoche, they were basically aids to help a person step through a machine language program, with the person performing the low-level actions themselves.
Re:A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe (1989)
by jhbadger on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @07:36PM
(#39198110)
Yes, very funny. But they knew what they were doing when they named it that. There was a series of early computers named ILLIAC (because they were created at the University of Illinois and after ENIAC, a famous computer that was "the first" digital programmable computer by some definitions of those words). The illiac artery connects to the heart, so CARDIAC makes sense (also of course, it was made of cardboard)
Re:A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe (1989)
by JKCalhoun on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @08:44AM
(#39190006)
The Computer Recreations column by A.K. Dewdney was fascinating to me when I was just getting into programming. (And of course it followed the more famous Mathematical Recreations column of Martin Gardner before him.)
It helped me understand computers!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_man_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_...
"CARDIAC arrest (ba-dum tsss)"
Had to disable JS to get the frame URL and load that instead.
Dewdney collected his columns into a few books over the years. The Tinker Toy computer is featured in this one: https://archive.org/details/tinkertoycomputer00dewd
10,000 parts. "The gates are all TTL (Tinker Toy Logic)" :-)