Editing User talk:Mstram

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http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:Jong/Dwarven_Computer
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 http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:Jong/Dwarven_Computer
-== Running The Computer ==
-Hi Mike,
-Ok, I haven't played DF in a while, but there is a buildings list, which
-would contain a list of all the buildings built in the current site. Of
-course this is absolutely useless in the present context as it would be
-populated with literally thousands of entries of every door, screw pump,
-pressure plate in the fortress. There is also no zoom function in 40d. The
-best that you can do is to edit the ini file so that the window size is
-bigger and contains more tiles. You can also press TAB to hide the useless
-minimap. You should probably look up the standard DF view controls.
-Now the basic principles of operating the computer. Unfortunately there is
-no convenient I/O system, and the clock is not automatic, so the operation
-of the clock, and the input of the memory registers must be done manually.
-When I say manually, I mean that you must press q, move the cursor over
-the screw pump you intend to activate, set the screw pump to start pumping
-manually, and wait for a dwarf to come to operate the screw pump. The
-screw pump will then fill the tile containing the pressure plate and this
-will be a 1 in the memory cell, or it will advance the clock by one step.
-Convert 1 - 0
-To convert a 1 to a zero, the memory cells have an extraction pump in the
-level above the pressure plates ( the pink ^ symbols). Sending a dwarf to
-activate this pump will extract and dump the water from the tile with the
-pressure plate and set the memory cell to zero.
-If there is no extraction
-pump, and the cell empties the moment you stop pumping, it means that the
-cell is actually an output buffer, which looks similar to a memory cell
-but is not. Oh and don't forget to stop the pumping, otherwise the dwarves
-will try to keep the pump going indefinitely.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Ok to operate the computer, first you must ensure that the water reservoir
-below the pressure plate deck is filled with water.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-You must also ensure that the power plant in the lowest level of the fort is in operation.
-It should be active in the save I put up, but I'm not sure. If not, the blue
-levers generally operate the important bits of the plumbing. Unfortunately
-I don't precisely recall which lever does exactly what, so you may have to
-risk pulling likely looking levers and seeing what happens.
-I should now digress to comment on the behaviour of "linking" in DF. As
-you may already noticed, there is no data bus in the computer, or any "
-wires" that conduct information between various components. The "wires"
-that you see, simply supply the power to the components are are always on.
-The components of the computer are connected virtually via "linking". What
-is linking? It is basically the method by which signals are converted into
-actions in DF. Example, I link a door to a lever. Pulling the lever
-creates a signal and the door opens. In the computer, the signals are
-generated by pressure plates, and the actions a various gears being
-toggled (gears are unique in that their state toggles, rather than
-conforming to the on/off state of the signal source)
-Unfortunately, once linked, there is almost no trace of the link between the lever and the
-door, and almost no way to predict what will happen when you pull a lever (
-** there is a method, but it is really really impractical). **
-This is why pulling levers that you didn't build yourself, or you did build, but had
-forgotten, is a rather dangerous and risky business, and is kind of a
-running joke among experienced DF users, especially those who play
-succession games. This is also why you can't really tell how the computer
-works just by looking at the physical schematics, which is really quite
-unfortunate.
-**I did think of implementing an actual bus, but this would
-have introduced issues that I preferred not to deal with. **
-On - Off Switch
-Ok, going over the map, I see that there is a small cluster of levers
-close to the North edge of the map on the sensor deck. There are also blue
-levers scattered around the map.
- One of these levers should be the on/off
-for the computers power supply connection to the power plant. Another
-should open all the doors in the plumbing, and one should open the drain (
-which you shouldn't normally have to open). There should be one to open
-the door to fill the pre-filling cistern, and one that activates the pump
-that actually does the filling. There's supposed to be one that controls
-the door between the cave river and the water shaft, but I forgot where it
-was.
-When the computer's reservoirs are completely filled, you need to turn off
-the water supply pump, otherwise it would continue to attempt to fill the
-reservoir. This would prevent the memory cells and output buffers from
-draining, and the computer wouldn't be able to run.
-Clock
-Now you need to ensure that the water tile in the clock is in the starting
-position, that should be the top left corner tile. You also need to ensure
-that the program counter is empty. It would be wise to ensure that all the
-other memory registers are empty as well, although I'm pretty sure that it
-shouldn't be a problem.
-Once you have set up the computer, you can input your program into the
-main memory (using the dwarves). You, uh have to refer to the
-documentation for the machine codes. Once you have done that, all you need
-to do is to operate the clock. Just instruct a dwarf to operate a pump to
-move the water tile into the next cell, then watch the computer until it
-achieves a steady state, and repeat. Each clock cycle should execute one
-instruction.
-If you just want to know how it works, you should read the original white
-paper, which is in the first post and on google docs
-https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdISzBuNg6ZWZGd0d2t4YjlfMjJ0ejlzc2dnaA&hl=en
-There are some differences between the white paper and the actual computer.
-The final memory cells are derivative of a design posted by someone else
-in the thread. It's probably optimal in terms of size and speed, although
-I would be happy to be shown otherwise. The memory output multiplexer is
-also not in the white paper, although it's construction is fairly simple,
-although large scale. The adder design I used is actually not optimal, the
-optimal design is in some other thread, and on the wiki.