OT-ish... what to do with > 400 relays...

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Feb 19 18:19:34 2004

>From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
>
>On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 23:43, John Lawson wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
>>
>> > Polling list wisdom here...
>> >
>> > Hmm, any suggestions for anything creative to do with around 450 or so
>> > 5V relays? I have a bucket full here (literally).
>>
>>
>> Form? Contacts? terminal type?
>
>D'oh, I put that in and then managed to obviously slice it out before I
>hit send :/
>
>Majority of them are just DPDT types, with a few even just SPDT. Not, I

Hi
 With as little as a SPDT, you can build all of the needed computer
functions. the DPDT gives one more freedom in design. Using
DC and blocking diodes adds another advantage. If I were going
to build such a machine, I'd build it as a single bit alu and
serial registers. I'd have a diode matrix with pegs or thumb
screws for program memory. I'm not sure how I'd deal with RAM.
Of course, using just relays would work but it'd be nice to
have some type of non-powered method. The early Zuse machines
had a mechanical setup ( that didn't work ). Maybe biased reed
relays is an option.
 Bit width could be anything, even adjustable. Four bits is actually
quite useful and less waste compare with 8 bits when you consider
that a true false flag would waste an entire word width.
Dwight



>suspect, enough poles to do anything serious with. They're all
>PCB-mounting miniture types (honking great things with open contacts
>would be nice, but I wouldn't have the space to store them even if
>someone gave me a pile of them!). No idea of switch speed, but then
>maximum speed would not be a design goal anyway!
>
>They were pulled from a pile of phone exchange boards; the various CPUs,
>ROM, RAM and a few useful logic chips + transistors were what I was
>really after as usable spares, but it seemed a shame not to save all
>those relays too.
>
>cheers
>
>Jules
>
Received on Thu Feb 19 2004 - 18:19:34 GMT