Understanding the Intel 4004 clock circuit
Noting that the Intel 4004 was normally sold as a chip set called the Intel MCS-4, the standard clock circuit used appears to be this (from this PDF, kindly provided by this vendor of MCS-4 test boards): Which means I want to work out what this circuit is doing. First off, let's understand these flip flops. I found this really good course on Computer Organization and Design from Intermation that I think is worth more attention that it appears to have received. I especially like how the sequence of videos starts by explaining the precursor memory types including core memory. There is of course a series of relevant Ben Eater videos as well, so I've linked to those as well. These concepts directly map to the flip flop usage in the Intel MCS clock circuit. As a bonus, a dude named Brek on YouTube built his own core memory, but the only documentation I can find is a series of YouTube videos from 2015. Certainly the links in the Hackaday article are all 404 errors now. I made a playlist of just those videos for convenience. So, this circuit starts to look like two clock dividers based on watching all…