Test rig and Clock

Day 34

     1 of the most important parts of building any physically complex machine like this is to make sure all the parts work not only together but individually. That is by far a much easier task with a build this big if you test your components first. In industry this is simple quality control in our case it will save hours of troubleshooting and hair pulling. so today I threw together a quick test rig for the relays which doesn't need to be overly complicated in this case it consists of 5 indicator LED's and a switch attached to a relay socket you simply plug the relay into the socket and 4 of the LED's should light flip the switch and all 5 should be lit then remove the relay and insert the next relay. This test should take less than 10 seconds per relay from start to finish which should allow for quick and efficient testing of the over 500 relays involved in this build. This is 1 way to skin this cat in all honestly it could just as easily be accomplished by running each relay as R1 in the clock circuit but this would induce many other points of failure but would give the benefit of a more realistic load to test on. In this case with how basic a component these relays are there is something to be said about following K.I.S.S. Which is a principal I try to live by. you could also build many other test rigs that would all work and all would likely accomplish the same basic task. The long and short of it is as always there is more than 1 way to skin a cat. MEOW!

     The clock circuit build will be finished tonight I discussed the exact physical layout with several people and the decision was completely unanimous so I have decided that instead of simply prototyping this out it will be built as a permanent fixture. This decision was predicated by the cap packs and the trouble I had with them the other night. When I soldered them to the perfboard, the way things worked out they left more than ample room for the relays to fit in as well as the switches and indicators. This allows the clock circuit to not only look cohesive in the final build but grants us the ability to use it during other phases of prototyping and testing apart from the other sub assemblies themselves.

Each pack is connected on the vertical plane leaving a sizable space below or above for the relays to be fitted. To secure the relays I am leaning towards cutting a hole large enough for the base of the relay to fit into and hot gluing them in place then wiring everything up on the underside the switches will be simple slide switches mounted through the board for now but for the final build they will be removed and replaced with toggle switches for the run/stop and power switches and a momentary toggle for the single step switch which will be extended through the Plexiglas cover plate.

     I will likely post videos of the clock and test rig in action tonight and will discuss the clock at length Wed. after that we will move on to the next portion of our build which will be the various functions of the ALU. Then a move back to theory of operation as I seek to add functions to the computer to fill up spots in my 4 to 16 decoder line.