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The KCL structure

A project log for Yet Another (Discrete) Clock

I HAD to finally do this basic "exercice de style" in digital electronics, using some hundreds of transistors and diodes...

yann-guidon-ygdesYann Guidon / YGDES 05/19/2016 at 01:160 Comments

After I sketched The HMS board, @K.C. Lee made a pertinent remark about another use of these boards for dividing the 18KHz source down to 1Hz.

Two HMS boards divide by 60, each, or 3600. Only a factor of 5 is needed to get 18000Hz. This reduces the overall complexity but increases the parts count (which I have been very careful to keep low... until now).

The other problem is how to implement a ÷5 predivider. I reused the ideas of Divide by 15 to create the following diagram:

FF1 and FF2 create a divide-by-4 counter and FF3 registers the overflow of FF2. The counter goes through the states 000, 001, 010, 011, 100 then during the next cycle, the latch at the bottom (with a pair of PFET and a pair of NFET) forces the reset during half a cycle. The state should go back to 000.

Actually, FF3 might not be necessary because it's used as a sort of set/reset latch that adds a one-cycle delay. Maybe I can save a few transistors.

In fact no because the latch is synchronous on one edge of the clock signal so at least one "charge pump" is required.

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