Re:Show HN: Mechanical Computer Kit (Roons)
by uncial on Thursday May 01, 2025 @03:34PM
(#43862347)
I'm absolutely going to need a few hours to properly digest this, but here are my preliminary thoughts:
You could almost certainly do a subleq in roons! Tbh it may end up being a practical approach to making a compact full computer -- though seems like it might compromise legibility. This is way outside my wheelhouse, thank you for the links, I have a lot of reading to do.
Re: an ASCII grid -- I explore this a little bit in the tutorials, but because of the up/down nature of the loom, each marble only occupies 25% of the surrounding whitespace, so this kind of display doesn't end up very visible. This is why I'm leaning more towards the peripherals approach for rendering stuff.
Re:Show HN: Mechanical Computer Kit (Roons)
by anthk on Thursday May 01, 2025 @03:56PM
(#43862620)
Or just send the keys to a typewriter, as some guy did with a ZMachine, Asterisk and the mentioned device. But it would need a microcontroller, or a way to roll a ball in a precise way to type down a letter.
You could almost certainly do a subleq in roons! Tbh it may end up being a practical approach to making a compact full computer -- though seems like it might compromise legibility. This is way outside my wheelhouse, thank you for the links, I have a lot of reading to do.
Re: an ASCII grid -- I explore this a little bit in the tutorials, but because of the up/down nature of the loom, each marble only occupies 25% of the surrounding whitespace, so this kind of display doesn't end up very visible. This is why I'm leaning more towards the peripherals approach for rendering stuff.