The History of Minecraft’s Super-Computers

This right here is an and gate it takes two inputs and gives an output only if the two inputs it receives are turned on and this This is a cpu built using only redstone currently running tetris without any mods plugins or command blocks how did the minecraft community get from this all the way over to this well this is the history of The story starts july 2nd 2010 with the release of minecraft alpha v 1.0.1 which brought the addition of redstone dust and redstone torches except they actually didn’t have a name back then and were only called the red dust stuff by notch in some tumblr post so we’ll just go with that

Very little was done with the red dust stuff back then as it would break if the player warped over it and on july 6 it was updated to not do this anymore this update also brought the first ever redstone youtube videos like this one where a guy makes the sheep blow up

Now i’m gonna try and keep this video reasonably low-tech and simple so that anyone can understand it so all you need to know is that a logic gate is how multiple inputs interact with each other they make up everything about computers and that they absolutely start to build

With only redstone and redstone porches the first pioneers of redstone computers spent their time on the minecraft forums making basic things like a twitter display or segment display clocks and needless to say there was very little hope from the general player base that making a computer could even be possible

On august 17th a user by the name cyber s4 creates a video showcasing an absolutely huge build which functions as ram for a computer it can store 16 bits of memory or just enough to store one smiley face emoticon in the description of the video he states that he might be

Working on more parts of a computer in the future and then proceeds to do nothing else until six years later where he uploads a video of himself peeling plastic off an old radio it wasn’t until two months later when the first real pioneer of redstone computing the internet for the win would

Upload this viral video of a 16-bit arithmetic logic unit he built which is just nerd thought for a calculator inside of a cpu what’s special about this is that it was actually designed to be a part of a full working computer and this won’t be the last time we hear from this guy

What’s even more special about this is that this was made before creative mode and before repeaters so half of the redstone torches are just used to extend signals and everything was built either in survival mode or through using mcedit another month later the user the onelas completes and uploads the first ever

Fully working minecraft computer featuring eight whole bytes of ram this was the first computer ever to feature a full instruction set meaning it can basically do anything a modern computer can do assuming you don’t mind waiting a very long time for things to process and didn’t want it to output any images it

Is programmed through flickering levers and then pressing a button to save the program to its memory apparently this whole thing was built in survival mode and the madman even uploaded a video of himself surviving a night without any torches underneath the computer as if he wasn’t just one creeper away from

Ruining all of his work the next day the internet for the win uploads his first completed computer although it did roughly the same thing and actually had no ram at all only using the very limited cpu registers as memories for its program the day after that nerfer releases a

More compact cpu design although this had only two bytes of memories and had extremely limited operations innovation was kinda at a standstill at this point with several engineers building their own pcs built on the hat architecture which is exactly the same thing that internet for the win was

Doing and then a couple of other people built 32-bit calculators which were cool but none of them ever really made it into a full computer build things started picking up again in february of 2010 with the release of minecraft beta 1.3 bringing the addition of repeaters which allowed for redstone

Signals to be extended faster more compact and without having to place redstone torches everywhere it was also around this time that red dust stuff finally gained its official name as redstone as this is what the nerf community had called it at the time on the 24th of june 2011 the first dual

Core cpu was created by anomalous cobra and jaw master 15 which worked by passing the outputs of the first cpu into the input of a second and vice versa to eventually do things twice as fast although it could only handle 8 bits and output numbers smaller than 100

It wasn’t truly dual core either more dual cpu the 30th of june 2011 brought minecraft beta 1.7 and pistons which allowed people to create actual working displays for their computers instead of just using redstone torches and this was first and possibly best use on the 22nd of august 2011 by

The neon 84 which came out of literally nowhere with a huge computer although it was only an 8-bit computer it had 64 bytes of ram a 16 by 16 display and a keyboard which allowed for manual inputting of letters which would then appear on screen with the code for

That being stored in 512 bytes of rom essentially the first ever minecraft typewriter dignion claimed that the display was also capable of lighting up single pixels instead of just displaying words for a truly functional computer but no video of this nor any download of the computer was ever released three

Months later lauren zwayne released his red game computer which also featured a full piston display and he would continue to work through three iterations of this computer as cool as all the redstone is there is no video of the later iterations doing anything and

I can’t figure out how to get it to do anything interesting enough to share but just know that it existed Minecraft 1.2.1 was released on the 1st of march 2012 adding redstone lamps which improved on the display capabilities of pistons by making them actually light up and reduce lead they caused on people’s dying pentium 2s however these actually saw extremely limited use mainly as binary output or 7

Segment displays as no new redstone mechanics had been introduced to allow more interesting designs to be built and everyone just kept using the same architecture from before the redstone community really needed some new toys to play with and on march 13 2013 they would get this in the form of the redstone update

This update added most of the more complicated and useful redstone features used everywhere today including blots of redstone droppers hoppers and most importantly of all comparators which allowed for some serious improvement however these new features were of little interest to most people as no new cpu designs actually came out for a very

Long time this was especially true for i am mr hello who are you who on the 17th of july 2013 uploaded what is to my knowledge the first video of a cpu with a true working display and demonstrates its draft drawing capabilities all without actually using anything added in

The 1.5 update and then that was kind of just it people stopped working on their cpus for a few years there were of course still people making them but they were all extremely similar to the earliest computers that was until 2015 when members of a server called open redstone engineers began taking the

Interest in minecraft computers and building their own developing parts of cpus and so on one particular innovator of this era was a youtube channel called redstone without limits who created an independent two kilobytes of ram using comparators and started working on a 32-bit cpu although it doesn’t appear

That this project was ever finished and the ram module was pretty unusably big even if it were impressive another innovator was lego master 99 who made the first quad-core cpu in minecraft although once again held back by the fact that it was only 8-bit and

Did not have a true display it does have inputs and outputs so you should program it to do things like opening piston doors or really any other redstone functions with a minecraft which makes it practical if you consider building a huge redstone cpu as being something practical

This guy also made an entire programming language which allows programs to be written on someone’s computer and then uploaded into minecraft by generating a bunch of fill commands that it performs automatically to write the code in and this is probably lego master’s greatest achievement three years later lego once

Again outdoes himself by giving his computer a gpu and a fully working display as well as having a user input panel instead of inputting code for some of the more basic functions although it does have support for the compiler he made and can do things like drawing smiley faces or plotting drafts

Then game alarm 2019 which brought with it smp live pewdiepie hypixel skyblot minecraft mondays and the eventual resurgence of minecraft as the game basically becomes a hit for the second time overnight people float back to their game and the hundreds and hundreds of new redstoners floored to build the

Exact same 8-bit and 16-bit computers that have been built since 2010. a notable exception to the rule is seth blind who built an entire atari 2600 emulator in minecraft although this has been in the words for a few years before then this was the year where he got it

Running at 1 fps which makes it borderline usable i haven’t mentioned this properly though as it runs entirely on command blocks but i thought the use of dirt and stone blocks to represent ones and zeros in memory was too cruel not to mention then 2020 came along the pan damage

Started and all of a sudden a lot of very talented people had a lot of spare time and that included the great minds at open redstone engineering this was also around the time that editing software became easier to use and easier to pirate so everyone and their mother was editing their cpu demonstrations

Videos like some sort of out of season apple product release the first example of this was from matt batwins who created a calculator with a full lamp display designed to be as user friendly as possible another pointless computer was the one used by red slime craft

Which was a 4-bit computer but was also a flying machine so it could move this does technically make it the first computer built without using any redstone dust at all but it sacrifices so much functionality for its form then on the 23rd of june 2020 came the video

That inspired me to make this video the q cpu by q smalley the main attraction of this computer is its size it’s really small for its power and supports up to 256 bytes of memory this is a heavily modular design that can add or remove things as they are

Needed as well such as inputs that can be used whilst programs are running adding or removing a screen if not needed most impressive of all this computer also features a full external assembler meaning you can program it like you would program any other programming language and the assembler

Creates a pastable schematic for the world that allows for that program to be ran in game and finally it features a 1.27 earth slot which is really fast compared to other cpus and it achieves this largely through its compact design the fastest cpu by far was made by

Fearless underscore zed on the 25th of september 2020 which runs at 5 hertz this is roughly the fastest possible a cpu to get as redstone only runs at 10 tits per second so a cpu will never run faster than 10 earths but it’s basically impossible to avoid using repeaters

Somewhere which add delay and this speed was achieved through sending instructions to the cpu before it finishes processing the first instructions and being very wary of how many repeaters are placed to cut down as much time as possible the only downside is the fact that it is just a basic

Calculator june 5 2021 torb releases a viral video showcasing the a1 earth’s computer that also features both calculator functions and a full pixel display the computer can be programmed by placing redstone torches in the rom section according to an instruction set given in the butch ceret in the world

Back over to mad batwings on the 3rd of june 2021 he started creating game consoles inside minecraft they’re like normal computers but designed to play a specific game instead of having a general purpose which is equally impressive as they are much faster than general computers due to them being

Purpose built as a result matt was able to create playable games such as atari breakout that involved a basic physics engine or chess which has a lot of things to keep track of other of matt’s projects included a huge drafting calculator that can draft literally any super complicated function over the

Course of several hours and an even bigger calculator that supports 16-bit inputs and 32-bit outputs and most recent of all on the 13th of november 2021 sam yuri creates and uploads the computational humongous unconventional number and graphics unit by samuri 2 or the chandras 2 for short sporting

256 bytes of memory and a one earth slot the chandra s2 is probably the most intricate and powerful cpu and also supports additional program memory if it is needed much like the q cpu the chandra chandras2 has an external programming language that can be used to

Create programs for it in the form of schematics and although it’s not exactly real-time processing it can be sped up through a variety of mods and server plugins i strongly suggest that if this video interested you that you check out the original videos and builds themselves

All the links are in the description and i’ve included some extra resources there too if you want to learn to build your own computers in minecraft i hope this non-stablet video has been something different and enjoyable we haven’t stopped making strablet videos but we thought a bit of variety could be

Fun and it’s also january thanks for watching have a nice day