It’s an oft-forgotten fact that the workings of the modern computer don’t require electronics. All of the basic logic gates can be implemented, although much more slowly and prone to malfunction, with physical Newtonian parts.
Shadowman39 has been working hard to implement an 8-bit computer entirely out of parts of the building set K’NEX. He’s just released his fourth progress video (18 minutes):
Here are the previous videos in the series: Part 1: the ALU (15 minutes), Part 2: Registers, RAM and Data Transfer (18 minutes) and Part 3: ROM, Program Counter and Jumps (20 minutes).
This isn’t the only K’NEX-based computing device out there, but it seems to be the most complex and capable of doing actual work. I do hope that none of the little plastic parts on the inside of that multicolor computational Borg cube doesn’t break a tooth, because replacing it seems like it would be nearly as hard as fixing a cylinder in an engine block.
