Mechanical logic gates

Posted by Matthew Sat, 14 Jan 2006 02:17:00 GMT

A few people have designed boolean logic devices using LEGO pneumatics… I had suspected that there would be a large number of logic devices using mechanic principals, but a search for mechanical logic devices didn’t get many hits.

He decided to take matters into his own hands and design mechanical LEGO logic gates. A clockwise rotation represents a binary “one” while a counter-clockwise rotation represents a binary “zero.” The AND gate seems to require less pieces than a NAND gate, contrary to transistor design.

LEGO Mechanical Logical AND Gate

Unfortunately, he failed to implement an XOR gate. I wonder if it would require a more complex mechanical design (contrary to its simple transistor layout.) Kudos to the first person who implements a 16-bit binary adder with a Manchester carry chain using LEGO! VLSI is not my strong point.

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