OT:techology

[Gordon JC Pearce]

Jules Richardson wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 21:20 -0700, woodelf wrote:
> 
>>Tony Duell wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>I'm baffled by those who would gladly spend months searching for the 
>>>>right NOS replacement part for a 20-year-old computer, and who would 
>>>>cheerfully build their own computer out of sand and bamboo on a desert 
>>>>island given a proper vacation, or who've memorized the arcana of all 
>>>>mechanical and electrical technology in the last 100 years, or whom
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>
>>Hmm  sand and bamboo  how would you do that  ?...
> 
> 
> Argh, don't ask things like that. 
> 
> You've got gravity. Dry sand flows pretty well. Bamboo is hollow and so
> can be used to channel dry sand around. Different lengths of bamboo
> could be used to introduce delays. Doubtless you could make basic logic
> gates. 
> 
> Some sort of mechanical effort would be needed to lift sand again in
> order to combat gravity pulling sand downward.
> 
> Not much different from a relay computer really, I suppose. Just slower.
> And more sandy.
> 
> (I think you got your attribution wrong by the way! Tony might enjoy
> such a challenge :)

But the sand would wear down the channels, making the fit looser.  An 
interesting form of bit-rot...

Gordon.