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Experimental Dekatron Cell

A project log for DekatronPC

Silicon-free computer on vacuum and cold-cathode tubes with pure brainfuck instruction set

artem-kashkanovArtem Kashkanov 02/17/2022 at 09:160 Comments

For my Dekatron-based vacuum tube computer I need to build 4 counters with 17 dekatrons with few deviations between counters:

IP( Instruction Pointer) counter - generates address of current instruction. Has 6 dekatrons so can handle regions from 0 to 999999. Doesn't require any write operations but has full Reading block. Also set to 0 required

LOOP Counter - Collect current loop level for loop lookup process. We can do IP++ or IP-- so need to scroll instruction chain like +++[+[+[+]++ with counting current level of skipped loop. Doesn't require any write or read operations. Set to 0 required and Zero output requested.

AP (Address pointer) counter - contain 5 dekatrons and handle from 0 to 29999 cells - as Brainfuck has 30k cells.  Doesn't require full Write block but need set to 0 for all block and set to 2 for highest dekatron. Full read block.

Data counter - contain 3 dekatrons and handle from 0 to 255. It require full write block, full read block and block with will do 0 to 255 and 255 to 0 operations carefully. So first I want to build full noval-based dekatron cell like rendered one.

This is a cell circuit without write logic. 

Dekatron PCB would be look like this (but I need to update all renders as already modified the circuit).

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