Matt is fiercely fighting my wandering off into the weeds as is my wont, so-since I can’t cover everything on PE ’s printed pages-I’m writing ancillary articles like this to capture and share a lot of super-interesting contextual material (take a look at my Solderless Breadboard Blog, for example). Unfortunately, the editor of that glorious tome, the nefarious illustrious Matt Pulzer, wants me to focus on nitty-gritty hands-on stuff. Although it may appear impossible at first, there really is a no-trick logical solution, which is presented at the end of this column for your delectation and delight.Īs I mentioned in an earlier article ( Arduino 0s and 1s, LOW and HIGH, False and True, and Other Stuff ), I’m currently in the process of penning a series of Arduino Bootcamp columns for Practical Electronics ( PE ), which is the UK’s premier electronics and computing hobbyist magazine. If you haven’t been exposed to this little scamp before, then it’s well worth your taking the time to ponder this poser. On the bright side, we can use as many AND and OR gates as our hearts desire. Also, before you ask, we aren’t allowed to use any NAND, NOR, XOR, or XNOR gates. Sad to relate, there’s a problem in that we are informed we have only two NOT gates at our disposal. If we were permitted to use any logic gates we desired, then we would need only three NOT gates to do the job. Our task is to specify the contents of the black box. The three outputs are the logical inversions of their corresponding inputs (when A is 0, NotA is 1 when A is 1, NotA is 0 when B is 0, NotB is 1… etc.). We start with a black box that has three inputs, A, B, and C, along with three outputs NotA, NotB, and NotC. Speaking of logic, before we dive headfirst into the BCD fray with gusto and abandon (and aplomb, of course), let’s take a moment to remind ourselves of one of my favorite logical conundrums. In fact, may I make so bold as to say that, even if you’re a digital logic guru boasting a size-16 brain with go-faster stripes on the sides, if you don’t learn something new in this column then my name isn’t Max the Magnificent! The more I delve into this sort of thing, the more I say to myself, “Wow! I would never have thought of that!” A great example is binary coded decimal (BCD) because there’s a lot more to this topic than one might, at first, suppose. I love learning how logic designers of the past solved tricky problems with innovative solutions.
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