Minecraft Scientific/Graphing calculator

Someone has created a fully functioning graphing calculator in Minecraft. It does addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and trig functions. This thing is huge. Kind of reminded me of those early computers that took up a whole building. I was impressed.

This is from the video description:

Specs: 6 digit addition and subtraction, 3 digit multiplication, division and trigonometric/scientific functions. (The reason these are only 3 digits is because multiplication and division would take a long time to decode/complete/encode. Also, the fraction display is hard enough to build for 3 digits, let alone 6 - 6 digit RAM would not only be massive, but a bit pointless since the curves follow the same pattern surrounding the peaks.). Graphing y=mx+c functions, quadratic functions, and equation solving of the form mx+c=0.

The screen and keypad were always meant to be the main feature of this machine. The main display boasts 25 digits. Square root signs are displayed and can change to accommodate any number of digits. Square root signs, add, minus, multiply and divide signs are displayed at appropriate times, and there is a full fraction display. The 7-segments for the fractions are the smallest possible, being only 3 wide, and stackable vertically and horizontally.

I made a custom texture pack for the keypad, and made wooden pressure plates invisible in order to get the best effect.

The calculator itself is just over 250x200x100 blocks. It contains 2 6-digit BCD number selectors, 2 BCD-to-binary decoders, 3 binary-to-BCD decoders, 6 BCD adders and subtractors, a 20 bit (output) multiplier, 10 bit divider, a memory bank and additional circuitry for the graphing function.

holy sh...!!!!!!!!

WOW!

Some people have too much time on their hand. Even with build tools its still takes time.

On pro side, fancy replicating the VLSI ? 80286 is already marvelous I guess.

thats absolutely genius

Originally posted by NullVoid
Some people have too much time on their hand. Even with build tools its still takes time.

On pro side, fancy replicating the VLSI ? 80286 is already marvelous I guess.

To much time? I am sure who ever built this learned allot. It would be like saying, oh those Egyptians and their pyramids. They had to much time on their hands.

This is amazing, I can only imagine the knowledge this person must posses. I wonder what he or she does for a living. Maybe it was built by a team?

For some reason, this reminds me of the guy who created a fully functioning chess AI using Microsoft Excel :p Possibly because I was just reading a thread about chess right before this one... It's the same kind of thing, though, building something in a medium in which you do not expect to see it. On one level, yeah, this was a waste of time, since you can buy a graphing calculator pretty cheap these days, but some things are about the journey, not the destination :p It's like how a few months ago there was this kid who came into the electronics store I work at, and bought parts to build a 4-bit computer. What good is a 4 bit computer? None :p But it's not about that, it's about building and creating something cool and having fun.

reply to post by DragonsDemesne


You're absolutely right. Some times people do things just to see if it can be done. Success is not necessarily the goal. Either way, you have something to put under your belt.



reply to post by NullVoid

I'm sure this wasn't something he built in one sitting. Probably took a few weeks, maybe months. My guess is this was a school project.