Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:No saving and editing your paperworks, then. :( […]
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snorg wrote:Well, analog systems I think were used for stuff like calculating projectile trajectories, and accounting. Not sure what else. I think the Jacquard loom used a type of analog computer for controlling the loom. So, add basic automation to the list?
No saving and editing your paperworks, then. 🙁
snorg wrote:A transistor system would be digital, though. Vacuum tubes would be analog electronics. The above systems I believe were mechanical analog computers.
I remember the computers in Fallout, though. They have CRT tubes and transistors at most, but apparently such architecture is sufficient to run a human-like AI. 🤣
Well, a floppy disk isn't exactly high technology, you could probably have floppies. I don't think a relay-based computer would be fast enough for video or video games, unless it was really really low-res stuff. You might be limited to blinking lights for output, maybe teletype? It would be interesting to see if the guys that built these relay systems could drive any sort of video display.
If you had a system built up out of discrete transistors, it would definitely be a time consuming build. A 6502 has 3500 transistors, I'm assuming you would need several times that for all the support chips and other logic. Let's call it 7500 to be safe. Wiring up that many by hand would be excruciating, but possible if you broke it down over a long enough period. Testing would be a pain too.
But probably could be done by someone with enough time on their hands. You would probably end up with something like a PDP-1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1
The PDP-1 was fast enough to drive a display, you could probably have an HD for storage. Since one of the first games (Spacewar) was written for the PDP-1, you could probably play stuff like Pong, Nethack, maybe Asteroids.
A system like that might be at the extreme limit of what a single person or small team could build.