It was the lecturer of many years ago from my SSADM certification course who is responsible for the start of this project. I won't out my friend and mentor here, but come on, l've shown you mine, and so on. Sugar had hung from its beam untouched for weeks (one motor clip has fallen into a pile of books which I must tidy up some time) when I got a mail which essentially said "I looked at Sugar: remember my point about re-usable code?" and pointing me at Philo's Card Reader Okay, the connection may not be obvious, but the point was that re-usable code isn't stuff which the spec says is re-usable, it's stuff that really can be re-used. Like lift (elevator) control software - turn the hardware on end and you have an "on-demand" peoplemover controller. Better, this means that writers of peoplemover controller software can draw on fifty years of experience with lift scheduling. It's not a lesson I've forgotten over the intervening years, but perhaps SSADM lcturers have more time to surf the net than the people they teach.
My wish list for Sugar was to eventually build a physical Turing machine, and have the equipment so that a Scout could drive it. I only needed the hint to see that Philo's solution was more applicable.
"Andy, I really have no idea what you're on about..."No long beam, no problem with the grab, the second motor will only have to drive a linear track, not position a grab, and with the light sensor on Philo's model stationary, easy to position a Scout vertically, looking down on the card. The card moves through the machine rather than moving the machine along the card, but it will do for starters. I've already proposed examples to use Philo's card as a true Turing Machine to determine whether a number is odd or even, or to manipulate two three bit numbers and still leave space for an instruction. We still need to be able to change the state, which Philo's machine won't currently do, but that's just a matter of mechanics. Let's go - I've redesigned the light sensor mounting since I don't have enough yellow flat tiles: I do have enough yellow and black 2 by 1 bricks, so I'll use those instead.
"Whoops, sorry, I got carried away - there's an explanation here."
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