Name the Thing Contest – 66

27

This contest will run for one week (Nov 1 – Nov 6, 2008) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. Please do not give the answer in the comments.

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with "Name the Thing Contest" as the subject, and the message body consisting of:

  • The name of the item in the above picture
  • An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

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Added November 12, 2008 

The item to guess was a Quad 2-input OR gate

The winner is Jeremy A.

Thanks to all who entered (there were 154 entries)

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Below is a picture of the prize.


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27 Comments


  2. I have to agree. Maybe a better question would be identify the manufacturer which used this diagram in there datasheet?


  3. @ Fred
    No Manufacturer…
    but Wikipedia


  4. I imagine the contest box will be overfilled this time. Nice one.


  5. Hi Fred,

    I agree that would have made it much harder but I want to mix things up a bit and not keep it only for the very knowledgeable. Don’t worry there will be MUCH harder ones in the near future! 🙂


  6. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of younger people didn’t know what it was.

    (I know, of course, that it is a Centipede with four babies on it’s back.)


  7. what kind of electronic geek wouldn’t know this?


  8. @Hant: Plenty of people won’t know. Beginners, software programmers, people who don’t get into the whole design stage (just show me where to solder types), etc.


  9. Well, you either know this one or you dont….


  10. Well I don’t know this one… OR maybe i do?

    heheheeee


  11. hahaha I know 😀 talk to me: “electronic geek”


  12. …way too easy this time.


  13. Hah. If I win the prize, I’m going to hack it to test more than just network cables 😀


  14. I member these particularly when I always seemed to get one soldered in only to have to replace it cause my iron was so hot it fried it


  15. What else would a cable tester be able to be hacked to do?


  16. Why, repair them, of course!!


  17. so um when is the winner sposed to be decided


  19. It’s a quad comparator no?


  22. How can an OR gate have fewer than two inputs? They can have more.

    Perhaps you should have narrowed the question to “is it TTL or CMOS”?


  23. Hi Fran,

    Thanks for the comment, these all have two inputs. A and B are the inputs and Q is the output.


  24. It’s not always clear how specific the answer needs to be. I knew right away it was a quad 2 input OR gate (at first I thought it was a 7432 but then noticed the pinout didn’t match) and after some searches I could tell it was CMOS, but I thought maybe you were looking for the specific chip number and the only ones I found had a different pinout. BTW, what is the number of the chip shown?


  25. Hi Steve,

    Thanks for participating and thanks for the feedback. The article that the chip image came from is linked above the winners name (not a very technical site, but was the first site that had the image I was looking for). 🙂

    I wasn’t looking for anything very detailed such as the chip number, the one in the picture is the 4071 but I honestly would have thought that the pinouts would have been the same as the standard 7432 that I used to use back in the day… Sorry for the confusion, I wouldn’t have guessed that the picture of the gates would have been specific enough to be TTL or CMOS.

    If in doubt of the level of detail you can always ask in the comments, I will be happy to clarify. Good luck with future entries!


  26. >How can an OR gate have fewer than two inputs?

    An OR gate with one input is called a Buffer.


  27. >>How can an OR gate have fewer than two inputs?

    >An OR gate with one input is called a Buffer.

    I = Input
    O = Output

    Truth Table for a one input OR gate
    I | O |
    __+___+__________________________________
    0 | 0 | All Inputs Low, Output is Low.
    1 | 1 | Any Input High, Output is High.

    Truth Table for a one input AND gate
    I | O |
    __+___+__________________________________
    0 | 0 | Any Input Low, Output is Low.
    1 | 1 | All Inputs High, Output is High.

    One could argue that a Buffer is an OR gate with one input because… the output is high if any of it’s inputs are high; the is output low only if all it’s inputs are low.

    BUT, one could also argue that a Buffer is an AND gate with one input because… the output is high only if all it’s inputs are high, the output is low if any of it’s input are low.

    We have two conflicting arguments. Both are valid by the truth table; so, which one is correct? Comments…

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