Sorry, I tried to reply to your PM but the wretched board said my message was to long!!!
Message...
I don't mind the PM system, I don't tend to use much, and indeed, last time somebody wrote to me, their message sat in the basket unread for about a week because I didn't notice it!
Anyway...
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there's no programming involved at all it's just electric pulses and other stuff
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... yes, that is exactly what I mean. The function is acheived by an electronic circuit. NAND gates are actually extremely versatile, given enough of them, a clock, (and a 5 volt power supply the size of a small house!), you could actually build the hardware of the computer in front of you.
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So things work either as the previously mentioned NAND chips or they have a ROM in them, like a BIOS chip?
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There are other ways as well, after all, a NAND gate is made of smaller components.
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Anyways, this is all way over my head, it's just too interesting for me not to ask.
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Something that many programmers forget is that the thing they are programming is a machine. It is a collection of electronic components. If pressed, many will say there computer consists of a motherboard, a graphics card etc. without thinking about the chips that go to make up these large parts, or the gates inside these chips, or the transistors they are made from, or indeed, the crystal lattice the transistors are made from.
Sadly these days, this is not even taught at university level education in some places.
I came from the other direction. I'd been playing with electronic components, building radios and other odds and sods, since I was a boy, so I find this stuff easy and interesting.