Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #04229
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Bruce Robinson Bruce_Robinson@bc.sympatico.ca
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 15:36:29 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Transistor MicroCore
Tom Edwards wrote:
>
> To do the best of my knowledge, he went directly to 74xx14's -- he
> explicitly mentions "Schmitt inverters" in the patent which was granted
> in 1994 (five years ago -- ought to have been early enough in the BEAM
> universe.)
The patent refers to the MC14584 chip, which is a CMOS Hex Schmitt
Trigger -- main difference from a 74HC14 is it can handle a supply
voltage from 3 to 18 Vdc (as opposed to the 2 to 6 volts for the
74HC14). The MC14584 can also only handle about half the output current
per device.
I was fooling with Hex inverters (Schmitt & otherwise) 25 years ago, so
it seems likely that's what Mark Tilden was using too -- smaller chip
count = easier to assemble = more time to make robots.
Bruce
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