Jeff.Miller@samba.acs.unc.edu (Jeff Miller) (11/04/90)
This post is a bit premature, as understanding fractals is a good week to six months away for me, but I am so curious I have to ask. Has anyone built a practical analog fractal computer? I imagine an analog implementaion of an appropriate algorithm (I think I have seen square root function blocks etc). You feed it two sawtooth waves, one of high frequency and also driving the x axis of an oscilloscope, one of low frequency and driving the y axis much like the raster scan of most displays. You connect the "output" to the "input" and tap this to drive the z axis (intensity). If the output slammed the supply rail (as op amps tend to do in a positive feedback situation) that would be "going off to infinity", you get the picture... By varying the gain and offset of various circuit elements you could move around and zoom in on the set in real time. Ever been done? Any good reason why it absolutely couldn't work? Jeff Miller cornhead@sutro.sfsu