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If you think about it, it's not really mechanical if it has an FPGA. It should be made of gears or something.




If you're not familiar with how teletype machines worked you might enjoy it. There were early units that were purely electromechanical. It's really cool.

Usagi Electric did a nice video if that's your kind of thing: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sSiVYgot9SI

I think the video does a nice job of showing the mechanical components that encode the keypresses and generate the 45.5 baud serial output. The printing side isn't given quite as much coverage but you do get to see close-up views of it in operation.


I wonder if something mechanical could ever talk even USB 1.1 at 12 Mbps. Perhaps if it was small enough...?



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