As much as a flush toilet is digital as the lever is
either up or down :)

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Clocks do not have to tick.
A pendulum may be made to swing in a cone,
sweeping through two dimensions.
The timing is the same, the only problem is that no-one has found a good
way to limit the energy input so the arc (diameter) of the swing remains
small and constant.
The tick by tick release of energy in most escapements results in a
stable amplitude
of oscillation.
Conical (analogue) pendulums have been used in novelty clocks and
speciallised
clocks to govern the motion of telescopes, particularly for taking
long time exposure
photographs.
The continual start-stop of the train in a clock causes many problems
of friction and wear.
If the contacting surfaces were in continual motion friction and wear
would be much lower.
If only a good "escapement" to control a conical pendulum could be
found the life and
efficiency of the mechanical clock would be greatly increased, and no-
one would be
kept awake with the ticking of the clock.
As it is we have a very strongly established tradition of "locking"
and "impulsing"
in all the escapements of clocks, very similar to the zero voltage,
transition to high,
and ultimate return to zero, that we have to trigger counters and the
like.
cheers, Neville Michie

On 24/02/2008, at 2:46 PM, Tom Clifton wrote:

On Saturday 23 February 2008 11:15:35 pm Neville Michie wrote:

What kind of never-before-made clock can be made
with ALD's Zero Threshold MOSFETs?

http://www.aldinc.com/ald_przerothreshold.htm
http://www.aldinc.com/pdf/NewDesignConcepts.pdf
http://www.aldinc.com/sc_fet.htm

--
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On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:20:33 -0500
Bob Paddock bob.paddock@gmail.com wrote:

Threshold voltage alone doesn't say anything. V_th can be
easily controlled with the doping levels of the semiconductor.
Thus, there were FETs with arbitrary V_th (positve and negative)
available for ages. Though, what is problematic is to get a
small difference of V_GS between fully off and fully on. This
used to be in the range of 10-20V not too long ago and is nowadays
around 1V for low power MOSFETs.

Have a look at the datasheet. They specify an R_DS(on) of 104k
at 0.0V. I don't know with what kind of circuits you work, but
for me that is pretty much OFF as it can be. Only at an
V_GS of 4V you get a reasonable R_DS(on) of 500R, which is still
a lot, even for a small signal transistor.
There are also lots of interesting data missing from the datasheet,
like the actual I_DS versus V_DS and V_GS, frequency response,
capacitance values dependend on voltage levels, etc pp.

If you want to build cool new circuits, you rather stick to
the old fashioned, but proven FETs with full data available.

		Attila Kinali

--
The true CS students do not need to know how to program.
They learn how to abstract the process of programming to
the point of making programmers obsolete.
-- Jabber in #holo