A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe (1989) | Hacker News Reader

A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe (1989)

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In France in 1982, the magazine Science & Vie published a cardboard computer simulator, named "Ordinapoche". It was designed by Joel de Rosnay. Here is a cached copy in french: https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%...

It helped me understand computers!

Do you have another link? my mobile safari gots into infinite redirects.

The page contents: https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?inframe=1&url=h...

Had to disable JS to get the frame URL and load that instead.

This in is a tradition of earlier simulated ("cardboard") computers such as the 1965 "Little Man Computer" or the 1968 CARDIAC. Like Ordinapoche, they were basically aids to help a person step through a machine language program, with the person performing the low-level actions themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_man_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_...

"What do you call it when you're prosecuted for illegally importing cardboard computers?"

"CARDIAC arrest (ba-dum tsss)"

Yes, very funny. But they knew what they were doing when they named it that. There was a series of early computers named ILLIAC (because they were created at the University of Illinois and after ENIAC, a famous computer that was "the first" digital programmable computer by some definitions of those words). The illiac artery connects to the heart, so CARDIAC makes sense (also of course, it was made of cardboard)

The Computer Recreations column by A.K. Dewdney was fascinating to me when I was just getting into programming. (And of course it followed the more famous Mathematical Recreations column of Martin Gardner before him.)

Dewdney collected his columns into a few books over the years. The Tinker Toy computer is featured in this one: https://archive.org/details/tinkertoycomputer00dewd

In the tradition of 1961's MENACE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_...

I don't think so, MENACE actually learned to play, this appears to be just a look up table for precomputed positions. Still impressive.

The original: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X39.81

10,000 parts. "The gates are all TTL (Tinker Toy Logic)" :-)

"It could have been built by any six-year old with 500 boxes of tinker toys and a PDP-10."

Or many years after with some custom cut acrylic pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7wp70Xyxxw

Seeing this on display in the boston computer museum is a formative memory of my childhood.

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