The Cardboard Computer - IO is my name

I have streamlined the construction of my 5 contact edge connector to where I can produce the number that I need for Brainwarp. What follows is a pictorial step by step for making a cardboard edge connector. One thing to note is that the contact center to center is 3/4 inch. Materials are cardboard, brass paper fasteners and hot melt glue.

As of February 22, 2018 I now have 10 connectors just about finished.

This is the Mock-up of the Brainwarp ROM motherboard. Still needs six more connectors.

Here is the actual backplane with the first two edge connectors glued down and soldered.

Now have ten connectors wired to the back plane with six to go.

Ok now, here is the finished 16 four bit ROM back-plane. I never would have thought that I would ever make cardboard connectors.

Edge connectors made with cardboard ? Yup

This is a side project for IOs Brainwarp. The magnetic cards are not making very good consistent contact over time so I am looking into rolling my own edge connectors using my usual cardboard and fasteners.

What can I say,. It's pure Uglytech :-D    But it works..... Muahahahaha

February 16, 2018

Well, it works with the addressed test board so I think that this is a go :-)

Testing the logic for a diode ROM to be used on the Brainwarp entry panel. So far so good as it is working as expected. This test panel uses 2 bit addressing to select between 4 memory addresses with 4 bits each.

I have added a very basic speed control to the master clock circuit.

I have hooked up the new astable multi-vibrator and master slave flip flop to IO and the sequencer. Looking good :-) Yann has waited a long time for this ;-)

Got a bit distracted with the IO project ( Now how can that happen ) and decided to wire up a new ( for me ) flip flop circuit. Yann has wanted me to ditch the 555 as a clock and the pulser circuit from the start and now is the time :-)

By using a master slave flip flop I can get rid of the pulser and replace the master NOR flip flop with a Nand logic master slave. This is also the start for building a 4017 Johnson Counter using this master slave :-)

And here is a video of the new flip flop in action  as well as using the new clock circuit.    

I was starting to run low on my led supply for IO and then along comes a New Years gift so to speak. I frequent my local Habitat Re-Stores almost every week and they put out items that did not sell or not in good enough condition to sell.

Habitat for Humanity is a great organization that helps build and provide housing for those who do not have the financial means to do it on their own.

This week it was a box of 14 led fabric decoration kits that were old and the internal batteries corroding. Overall there are 140 leds for IO. Red, yellow and green should be nice in addition to the blue/white leds I have been using :-)

I have been a bit slow with updates but many chores have kept me away from the IO project. Melting some solder these past few days and the Cell Pointer boards are almost wired up. I really want to get the Brainwarp instructions up and working before the end of this year :-)

December 5 and the Cell pointer register is wired up :-)

Decided to wire the power and ground buss with bare wire as well as the enable line.

After wiring this register and then another I thought that it would be best to wire up a test panel to make sure I had things right. Glad I did as the second register had a few issues. The test panel again uses house lighting switches and a micro switch is used for the enable function.

While trying to solve some erratic issues with the master flip-flop I discovered that IO can count down as well as up by a value of one. By feeding in a value of 15d or 1111b I make use of 2's complement and subtract the value of one from the counter. This will work out very well for the Brainwarp language  to shift the cell pointer and cell value up or down by one. I was expecting to have to wire up additional circuits to accomplish this but find that I am already there :-)

IO might be out of the finals for the Hackaday Prize 2017 but will not stop there. The work on IO will continue :-)