9 ms·

A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe (1989)

• 082349872349872 3y ago
  In the tradition of 1961's MENACE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_Crosses_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_...
  • _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    I don't think so, MENACE actually learned to play, this appears to be just a look up table for precomputed positions. Still impressive.
• jcmeyrignac 3y ago
  In France in 1982, the magazine Science & Vie published a cardboard computer simulator, named "Ordinapoche". It was designed by Joel de Rosnay. Here is a cached copy in french: https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbhrm.eu%2Fordinateurs-autrefois%2Fid283.htm#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&tab=url https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%... It helped me understand computers!
  • ustad 3y ago
    Do you have another link? my mobile safari gots into infinite redirects.
    • speps 3y ago
      The page contents: https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?inframe=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbhrm.eu%2Fordinateurs-autrefois%2Fid283_m.htm#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&tab=url https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?inframe=1&url=h... Had to disable JS to get the frame URL and load that instead.
  • jhbadger 3y ago
    This in is a tradition of earlier simulated ("cardboard") computers such as the 1965 "Little Man Computer" or the 1968 CARDIAC. Like Ordinapoche, they were basically aids to help a person step through a machine language program, with the person performing the low-level actions themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_man_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_man_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_...
    • askiiart 3y ago
      "What do you call it when you're prosecuted for illegally importing cardboard computers?" "CARDIAC arrest (ba-dum tsss)"
      • jhbadger 3y ago
        Yes, very funny. But they knew what they were doing when they named it that. There was a series of early computers named ILLIAC (because they were created at the University of Illinois and after ENIAC, a famous computer that was "the first" digital programmable computer by some definitions of those words). The illiac artery connects to the heart, so CARDIAC makes sense (also of course, it was made of cardboard)
• JKCalhoun 3y ago
  The Computer Recreations column by A.K. Dewdney was fascinating to me when I was just getting into programming. (And of course it followed the more famous Mathematical Recreations column of Martin Gardner before him.) Dewdney collected his columns into a few books over the years. The Tinker Toy computer is featured in this one: https://archive.org/details/tinkertoycomputer00dewd https://archive.org/details/tinkertoycomputer00dewd
• imglorp 3y ago
  The original: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X39.81 https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X39.81 10,000 parts. "The gates are all TTL (Tinker Toy Logic)" :-)
  • schubart 3y ago
    "It could have been built by any six-year old with 500 boxes of tinker toys and a PDP-10."
    • theolivenbaum 3y ago
      Or many years after with some custom cut acrylic pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7wp70Xyxxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7wp70Xyxxw
• bangaroo 3y ago
  Seeing this on display in the boston computer museum is a formative memory of my childhood.