Finally some understanding and a plan starts to take shape.

Day 4

     Program note I mentioned in my first post a desire to stick to a schedule and so far I've not really bothered thinking about it but starting Saturday which is day 5 I will be sticking to that schedule of 3 posts per week Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday I am doing this for a few simple reasons. First it keeps me working on this project consistently, but not overwhelmingly so. Also this keeps things on a schedule so on the chance someone follows along with me they know when to expect things coming down the line.

     Finally I have stopped chasing my own tail and gone where I knew I should have gone in the beginning. Harry Porter The first half of the video tutorial has really helped clear things up as he walks you through the building of each of these circuits I won't bother repeating it all as it's a boatload of info delivered very well and I don't want to mess it up. If interested go download it and watch it for yourself he does a great job of explaining it. I think I'm going to watch this a few times through to get as many of the details in my head as I can. My only true disappointment so far is that he uses modern silicone for the memory though he's not without good reason for it looking at the number of relays required to build in 32K of memory. It is quite prohibitive so this is the direction I will likely go as well if for no other reason than I haven't got an entire room to fill with banks of relays for this project let alone the cost.

     On costs wire in bulk is cheap as are the LED indicators used throughout this design but the 4PDT relays are going to be rather costly and if I clone Harry's computer I will need 416 of them I'm planning to buy 425 total to have spares and for various other potential projects I'm thinking of buying these in 25 piece lots so as to not break the bank. Which given my pay cycle of every 2 weeks should get me all of the relays I need by the end of September so the plan now is to do final assembly and operation by mid October. This seems like a reasonable plan to me as I won't be over taxing my budget but will be able to keep things fresh and moving along at a steady pace. I hope to be deconstructing and building programs for the bulk of that time so I have a lot of great stuff to play with when it's finished.

     Looking at things and exploring the various relay computers I have seen in the past few days I am certain that this is the type of relay computer I want to build. Over the next few months  I intend to break down the design of the Harry Porter computer understand it and where I can make my own practical changes. On a cursory look the majority of those changes seem to be around wire management and things like that plus stylistic changes. I am also considering breaking out the memory module so that I can alter that to full relay use later down the road. My main goals in these tasks are to not just copy what someone else has done but to really break it down and understand how it works and make it my own in some way. Time will tell how or indeed if I can do that. 

     I have spoken to my kids about this project and they are both really excited about the prospects it offers. Plus the cool factor is high even with how geeky it is.