Programmatic
Steampunker
This hard drive is a slightly modified version of the one I presented in the "Let's Make Some Hard Drives" thread (https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/lets-make-some-hard-drives.43916/page-2#post-1056562). The main difference is that this one uses a new design for the read/write mechanism and has a slightly more compact multiplexer.
The entire hard drive can store up to 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of data. It stores 16 times as much data as my RAM chip, while being only about 5 times the size, making it far more compact. The disadvantage of the hard drive is that, unlike the RAM chip, which allows you to access any byte at any time, the data in the hard drive must be read in the same order that it is written. This is because the hard drive stores data in a series of faulty lamp gates linked together via a rotating bit shifter. By triggering the bit shifter, you can cycle through the data and access each byte one by one.
In this video, I show the hard drive in action and how it is separated into 256 "blocks" containing 256 bytes each. These blocks can be accessed separately, essentially functioning as independent, smaller hard drives:
Finally, here is a closeup of a small section of one block:
And here is a single column containing 16 blocks. The full hard drive contains 16 of these columns:
The entire hard drive can store up to 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of data. It stores 16 times as much data as my RAM chip, while being only about 5 times the size, making it far more compact. The disadvantage of the hard drive is that, unlike the RAM chip, which allows you to access any byte at any time, the data in the hard drive must be read in the same order that it is written. This is because the hard drive stores data in a series of faulty lamp gates linked together via a rotating bit shifter. By triggering the bit shifter, you can cycle through the data and access each byte one by one.
In this video, I show the hard drive in action and how it is separated into 256 "blocks" containing 256 bytes each. These blocks can be accessed separately, essentially functioning as independent, smaller hard drives:
Finally, here is a closeup of a small section of one block:
And here is a single column containing 16 blocks. The full hard drive contains 16 of these columns: