| MadSci Network: Engineering |
Hi No Name, While I admire your spirit of adventure, I think a little basic electronics education would serve you better than what you are planning on doing. To begin with, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 2 inputs. The only 'inputs' a calculator has is the keypad. If the pins you refer to are in a user-accessible compartment, they almost surely are the battery connectors, and serve only to power the unit. Even if you were able to get it apart, I'm afraid you would be disappointed. Nowdays, calculators are built on one single 'chip' which has on it all the circuitry. These chips are designed and built to perform a specific function, i.e. a calculator, and wouldn't be of any use to you in building a different kind of circuit such as a clock or appliance controller, or anything else for that matter. I suggest you purchase a book like the "CMOS Cookbook", by Don Lancaster, ISBN # 0-7506-9943-4, which will provide you with a basic understanding of transistors, CMOS technology and basic electronics. You will learn about oscillators, timers, shift registers, flip-flops, etc., and will then be able to select the proper chips to design all kinds of usefull circuits. If it makes you feel any better, I took apart my Father's battery-powered, vacuum tube, portable radio when I was your age, or younger. What I ended up with was a box full of parts, and had no clue what each of them did. My Father was so mad, he made me spend all my free time at the library learning what each part did, and then re-assemble the radio! Hopefully, you won't have to learn that way! You may also want to visit the following sites and check out their "Application Notes" for understanding and designing different circuit elements. National Semiconductor - http://www.national.com Texas Instruments - http://www.ti.com Good luck! Your Not-So-Mad scientist, Karl Kolbus KarlKolbus@ameritech.net
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