[sdiy] Is everything digital?

[Glen]

At 12:59 PM 5/14/2005 , Tim Daugard wrote:
>
>> My electronics education taught me that "digital" circuitry had a
>discrete
>> number of normal states (that is, ignoring any malfunction of the
>> equipment, etc). By far, the most common digital circuitry in use
>today is
>> binary digital circuitry. There should be no reason we couldn't
>> *theoretically* have digital circuitry with a billion possible voltage
>> states. I've personally seen trinary digital circuitry, and I'm sure
>that
>> other circuitry has been built with four or more discrete voltage
>levels.
>
>I built a foot pedal switch board that uses trinary "logic". Two wires
>and ground result in nine distinct states. It uses transistors to set
>levels and opamps to decode the levels. This is digital? right.
>
>> So, perhaps "digital" isn't a totally incorrect word? I would agree
>that
>> quantized is also a good term to use.
>
>My next switch board projuct was going to go for 8 states on 1 wire and
>ground. This means I can use a standard guitar cable to control eight
>signal paths.
>
>I don't know who started this conversation - Earthlink was down
>yesterday and I think I didn't see the orginal message, but I hope I'm
>on track.

Hi Tim,

I started this, just a short time earlier today. I certainly agree with
your concept of digital, in regard to the foot pedal switch. So would the
retired military people who taught me electronics several years ago.

take care,
Glen