Hello,
Lately I've been trying to gain an understanding of processors/cpu's and the very simplest "input-output" system you can possibly engineer. I decided I would do a thought experiment where I would distill the computer down to the most basic level I could conceive, and decided that such a computer would be a single 7 segment LED. That seemed sufficiently simple, yet in some ways, still mysterious to me.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Imagine this LED hooked up to a keypad with numbers 0-9, each key sending a different signal to the processor. The processor, as I understand it, is best visualized as a network of on/off switches. But this is too general.
I want to go into more specific details but I'm not sure how. When you press a key on a small 0-9 numbered keypad, what exactly are the interactions occurring to produce the simple 7 bulb display? It's so simple, yet it's still not easy to see.
I put together another GIF of the next step in complexity, primitive animation:
^ not ready to tackle that yet, but would eventually like to understand that as well.
Lately I've been trying to gain an understanding of processors/cpu's and the very simplest "input-output" system you can possibly engineer. I decided I would do a thought experiment where I would distill the computer down to the most basic level I could conceive, and decided that such a computer would be a single 7 segment LED. That seemed sufficiently simple, yet in some ways, still mysterious to me.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Imagine this LED hooked up to a keypad with numbers 0-9, each key sending a different signal to the processor. The processor, as I understand it, is best visualized as a network of on/off switches. But this is too general.
I want to go into more specific details but I'm not sure how. When you press a key on a small 0-9 numbered keypad, what exactly are the interactions occurring to produce the simple 7 bulb display? It's so simple, yet it's still not easy to see.
I put together another GIF of the next step in complexity, primitive animation:
^ not ready to tackle that yet, but would eventually like to understand that as well.