The step-by-step, mechanical logic of old pinball machines on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2024–2025.
explainer · evergreen
Technology Connections takes apart the step-by-step electromechanical logic of a 1970s pinball machine. He shows how relays, steppers and switches track state and score without electronics.
HN recommends it as an in-depth look at mechanical logic, and uses it as an analogy for state machines and biological instruction processing.
“It goes horribly in-depth (in a good way).”
4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
I've been watching his videos on a 1970s pinball machine. It goes horribly in-depth (in a good way). Fascinating how much complexity could be managed with the simplest of interfaces. [link] ▶ this video
in “Why a toaster from 1949 is still smarter than any sold today (2021)” · View on HN
I think it's pretty charming. Games have so much abstraction these days it feels like there's no way to truly understand what it is they're even doing. One can spend months agonizing over the true nature of things and how ideas and concepts relate to each other and eventually distill it all into some object oriented organization that implements not just your game but all possible games. One can also just cycle the game's state machine in a big function, haha switch statement go brrr. Reminds me of the old NES games which would statically allocate memory for game objects, very much in the "structure of arrays" style, they too had game logic just like that. Also reminds me of old electromechanical pinball machines. You can literally see the machine cycle. [link] ▶ this video
in “VVVVVV Source Code” · View on HN
Yup - the first few minutes of one of Technology Connections' videos on electromechanical pinball machines shows this mechanism in action: ▶ this video
in “Can you get root with only a cigarette lighter?” · View on HN
After reading the reason why code isn't a good analogy, the mechanical/analog logic of old pinball machines might be a better example of how DNA processes instructions? Ref: ▶ this video
in “Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?” · View on HN