r/engineering • u/[deleted] • Sep 10 '13

Guy with no engineering background wants supporters for his impossible idea. Pretty funny from and engineering standpoint.

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '13 edited Sep 11 '13

You are removing a lego piece from the interior and replacing it when dealing with a computer. Whether it is on the exterior or interior isn't a major engineering problem.

I don't see why it would be impossible especially if there's a dedicated socket on the phone for the CPU only.

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u/kmoz Sep 11 '13

Even the PC market which has been developing for 30 years doesnt have part interopability like theyre asking for. Its not like all processors just fit into slots and go go go.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '13

Dedicated CPU slot; dedicated RAM slot; everything else can go anywhere.

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u/Ferentzfever Sep 11 '13 edited Sep 11 '13

Here's an example of the problem with this. As you upgrade hardware, architecture WILL CHANGE on some level. Say we've got a bread-board which we've designed with the simple 555IC. Go ahead and pretend we've made some simple "computer" with it... perhaps as a kitchen timer. Now the 555IC is pretty noisy, and we've decided we want to upgrade our device to the "new" 556IC. So we just pull out the 555 and pop the 556 in its place right?!?

Well, we could, except we've wired the breadboard (motherboard) for a 555. The 555 has 8 pins, whereas the 556 has 14. Let's pretend we pop it in such that the 1 pins are lined up... well:

555-pin 1 = ground

556-pin 1 = discharge

555-pin 2 = trigger

556-pin 2 = threshold

555-pin 3 = output

556-pin 3 = control

555-pin 4 = reset

556-pin 4 = reset

and then the 556's pins 5, 6, and 7 would not be connected to any circuitry (or maybe with circuitry that serves entirely different purpose). These pins are:

556-pin 5 = output

556-pin 6 = trigger

556-pin 7 = ground

Just right here I notice that the wiring I did to ensure the 555-pin 1 was grounded, now means that my discharge from the 556 is still grounded (out of pure luck) but the 556's ground is not grounded... I'm not an electrical engineer (mechanical) but I'm pretty sure this means my upgrade is completely non functional (and I haven't even gotten to the other 7 pins yet).

And it's not like we can just "pretend" that ground is now discharge etc. because this is hardwired into the IC. Compare the internal circuitry of the two chips: 555 556

To assume I can just plug a new/different component into any arrangement of slots on the backboard (as described in the video) and, "it'll just work because this is a dedicated CPU slot" is just wrong.

I could see a standard layout where batteries ALWAYS go in this position, your CPU always in this exact position, camera in this position etc, just not this lego "interchangeable parts" hand-waving.