Yes, I know it's frustrating. We can only offer suggestions on what is wrong when it is not apparently obvious. The fault might be in the circuit board, a trace is almost touching the one beside it and occasionally it does. This would be very difficult to find.

And you're right in that the RESET on the counter is low. It needs to be in order for the counter to count up. When the RESET is high, the counter is reset to 0.
At this point, an oscilloscope would be useful to see how long the pulse is when the counter goes from 59 to 60 and then to 0.

 

I figured out why nothing was working: I was using simple LEDs and not running the signal through the BCD decoder( 4511).

Now my AND and OR GATES work. Also since I fried one of my 4511s I didn't use a 4511 for my tens of hours because all it needed to display was 1 0r nothing. So that caused me even more confusion. But I think I have it all figures out now.


A big thank you to everyone who has put up with me. THANK YOU.

P.S. Does anyone know why the 4511 would matter?

 

The 4511 converts a 4 line BCD code into the 7-segment code to light up the various segments of the display. Unless you did the conversion yourself with a bunch of gates, I think it would be difficult to get 7 lines from 4.

 

I figured out why nothing was working: I was using simple LEDs and not running the signal through the BCD decoder( 4511).

Now my AND and OR GATES work. Also since I fried one of my 4511s I didn't use a 4511 for my tens of hours because all it needed to display was 1 0r nothing. So that caused me even more confusion. But I think I have it all figures out now.


A big thank you to everyone who has put up with me. THANK YOU.

P.S. Does anyone know why the 4511 would matter?

How were you connecting in the LEDs? What size of current limiting resistor were you using?

 

Let me fully explain my setup, I wanted to tedt my IC's so I though I would build a portion of my circuit on a breadboard. I choose to display my outputs in binary with LEDs connected directly from the outputs to ground. When I did this neither the AND or the OR worked properly. I then wired it to include the BCD decoders and the seven segment display, and my AND and OR started to work. Since my tens of hours didn't have a 4511 because it wasn't neccessry, I used a transistor.

My question is why would it work with the 4511 and not without.

 

As I suspected, it appears you just connected an LED directly between the outputs and ground. You must use a current limiting resistor! If not, your circuit might be able to provide enough current to light the LED but not sustain a high enough voltage doing it to be recognized as a HI by another logic chip.

What family of logic are you using? You may have said previously, but I don't want to go wading through the thread to look for it.

This is why we are always harping on people to provide a schematic of their circuit, even if it is just scribbled in Paint (I've done that for many of the ones I have posted). Then we would have seen that you were missing the resistor right away -- it's one of the things most of us, through experience, have learned to automatically look for.

I still don't understand what you mean by, "Since my tens of hours didn't have a 4511 because it wasn't neccessry, I used a transistor."

Used a transistor where? How? For what?

PLEASE provide SOME kind of schematic for the circuit you are ACTUALLY using!

Consider using the LED driver attached. Note that this was just thrown together in Paint.

 

Ok, thats why nothing worked. I thought I was ready to solder everything back together and my 1HZ time base stopped working. I've given up on that portion and am in the process of hacking a clock to get 1HZ.

What I mean by tens of hours is that digit is either 1X:XX:XX 0r X:XX:XX (off completly). Therefor I don't need a 4511, I can just wire the output directly to the 7 segment display with resistors.