Can you build a Calculator in ALPHA Minecraft?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Hey guys, I just want to show you a project I've been working on in Minecraft.

[00:00:04]It's up here.

[00:00:06]This is the oldest calculator in Minecraft, built 14 years ago, only using redstone, dust, and torches.

[00:00:13]Calculators today make use of the entire creative mode inventory. But in this version, all we can use is on and off signals. And I I I want to do that. So that's what we're going to do.

[00:00:26]And it took me like a year.

[00:00:33]Going from a blank world to a fully functional calculator with a display is insane. But in this version, it's even crazier. And I didn't realize this now, but this project would take way longer than expected and would have months of problems.

[00:00:46]>> I'm so tired at this point, bro. I'm like, I'm ready to be done with this project.

[00:00:52]But for now, I didn't know any of that.

[00:00:54]So, I booted up the oldest version I could get, alpha 1.2.0, and started working. Oh, look. Wait, there's the Nether. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, might as well turn it on. I mean, we might need the Nether.

[00:01:12]Okay, so we're turning the Nether off, but um this just highlights how buggy this version is. And this bug is totally not foreshadowing for any major detrimental bugs that will literally break me later in this video. But without knowing any of this, I started to focus on the six steps of building a calculator. And to start things off, we weren't going to build the display or the logic or the inputs. Instead, we're going to start on step uh step zero, which is clearing a flat ground.

[00:01:43]>> So, we're just going to clear this entire thing out, right?

[00:01:46]>> Yeah. I mean, I guess so.

[00:01:49]>> Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no?

[00:01:51]Absolutely. You have to tell me before I start.

[00:01:55]>> And since this was going to be so painstakingly laborious, I got my good friend Shaun to help me out.

[00:02:01]>> Just because we don't have efficiency or haste in this version doesn't mean we can't mine faster. In fact, there is a bug called click mining. Instead of holding leftclick to mine, you um you know click left click to mine. And by using this method, we saved a total of 0.2 seconds.

[00:02:21]Yeah, this this was still going to take a long time.

[00:02:28]>> Yeah, I made four double chest.

[00:02:30]>> Yeah. Okay, it's not bad.

[00:02:31]>> The third one is about to be almost full.

[00:02:37]Dude, >> this looks crazy. I wish you could turn day. That'd be nice.

[00:02:40]>> You don't have cheats.

[00:02:43]Okay.

[00:02:47]We're done. That was easy. Yay.

[00:02:50]>> Finally. Holy, dude. That was 2 hours worth of mining.

[00:02:54]>> Yeah.

[00:02:55]>> 2 hours worth. Rocklin. Two hours.

[00:02:58]>> Dude, this looks so dope.

[00:03:01]Now, what do we do? All right. With a nice day's work, all I have to do is type /stop in the servers console to save all of our progress. But don't don't press the X. Don't press the X cuz it won't save. Don't press Oh my god.

[00:03:16]>> Tiny monitor.

[00:03:18]>> Yeah, my phone.

[00:03:18]>> Yeah, my phone.

[00:03:19]>> Yeah, I'm kidding.

[00:03:22]>> Wait, what happened?

[00:03:24]>> Why am I over here? Why did I spawn here? Rock, did you I'm about to freak out.

[00:03:29]>> Oh no.

[00:03:29]>> Oh yeah. Rockcoon, you're going to have to do creative mode. I'm not doing that again.

[00:03:33]>> I'm guessing it didn't save.

[00:03:34]>> No way.

[00:03:35]>> Yeah, you're going to have to >> rock, you're going to have to go creative. I'm I'm about to freak out.

[00:03:41]Bro, >> so I wasted two hours of my life.

[00:03:46]>> I wasted two hours of my life.

[00:03:52]>> You excited to do this again?

[00:03:54]>> Hell no. But I'm doing it. Grab the AK.

[00:03:58]You hear the guy up top. He drops. Dead.

[00:04:01]White.

[00:04:01]>> You're really trying to convince me to play ZGO right now.

[00:04:04]>> Get this 30. Oh. Oh, >> it's not working. It's not working. I'm not going to play, bro. I'm telling you, it's not going to work.

[00:04:16]>> Oh.

[00:04:17]Oh, God.

[00:04:22]>> I can't believe we dug all this out by hand. That's insane. No enchantment table, bro. Look at this. Appreciate the sacrifice. Appreciate it. We needed to clear out even more space than I realized. So, we built these huge platforms over the ocean.

[00:04:39]And after clearing out a huge area, we could finally move on to step one, also known as building the alu. This is the part that does all of the math. But how can we do math with just redstone?

[00:04:55]An on redstone signal can be represented as a one and an off redstone signal can be represented as a zero. By putting multiple of these lines together, we can effectively create a binary number. This number 1 0 1 0 is a five. But in order to perform arithmetic on these redstone signals, we need to use logic gates.

[00:05:21]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:05:54]And with that, we have created a full adder. These addition circuits are completely different from their modern-day counterparts while being functionally the same. This is because we can't use repeaters, glass towers, or comparators to drive our circuits. And because of this, I am using a gate diagram I found on the wiki that's almost 14 years old. Almost done with the adder portion. Okay, I think that's it. I guess we can try it out. Let's do 2 + 2. So, it's four.

[00:06:26]Four. Yay. Okay. So, if we do a minus b, this would be 3 - 12. So, we should get -9. If we flick this lever here, -9. Oh my god, that's crazy. What? Oh, that's so awesome. Okay, I guess we can't really do the multiplier.

[00:06:46]Actually, we can do the multiplier.

[00:06:47]Let's do the multiplier. Oh god, not the multiplier. Oh no, no, no, no. The multiplier is going to be the really hard one. This is This is probably the easiest one that we're bro, that's gross. Okay, I think it's done. Let's see if this works. Okay, so we're going to multiply or no 4 * 2. This is 8. 2 4 6 8 6 What's 6 + 8? 12.

[00:07:14]Okay, maybe it's maybe there's a little bit of an issue, I think. Oh, oops. Ah, yeah. Okay, I get it. Okay, maybe that'll fix it. All right, 2 * 4.

[00:07:26]Let's see. 1 48. Cool. Okay, this is looking pretty good. I'm not going to lie. Let's do just a random number.

[00:07:34]Let's do 7 * 7 * 6. We're going to do 15 * 15, which should be 225.

[00:07:45]Okay. 1 2 4 8 16 32 128 + 64 + 32 + 1 225.

[00:07:55]Damn, that's crazy. Okay, this works, baby. Let's go. That is awesome. Okay, we have the multiplier. We have the adder subtractor. Now, we just need to do all of the conversions, which is cool. It should be I mean it's not it's not going to be easy but it's going to be cool. Technically I could end the video here because this is a calculator.

[00:08:15]But how in the world can you even read this? So this brings us to step two which is the input panel. But this step has a huge issue making this even harder than the last step. The ALU can only understand numbers in binary form. If we want to input any number using levers like 1 or 27 or even 279,000, we would have to build a separate hard-coded converter for every single possible number. So, it becomes binary before reaching the ALU. This means we would have to code thousands of different converters, which is impossible to build. So, how do we do this? Well, like this.

[00:08:59]Wait, this would be 14.

[00:09:02]Yeah, we'll try it again.

[00:09:05]8 9 10 11 12 13 14. Yeah.

[00:09:19]Instead of having one conversion per number for 279,000 numbers, we split any number into its digits and then convert the digits into binary. This way, we would only need a conversion for 0 through 9 numbers since each digit can only be at max 9, which also means we only need 10 tiny converters instead of thousands. Then utilizing a well-known algorithm called the double dabble algorithm, we can take this form also known as binarycoded decimal or BCD for short and convert it into a full binary number which can be sent to the ALU. But even with the double dabble algorithm, physically building this was hard and inevitably we ran into yet another issue. Bro, look at this. Check that torch flash.

[00:10:11]Check the torch.

[00:10:18]Obviously, the oldest version would be completely different from the modern versions. This so sucks because like everything that we've done in here doesn't work anymore. And this wasn't the only issue. Torch propagation caused the shift registers. Okay, let's flick this. How we looking, dude. What is going on? Pulse generators. Oh my gosh. and looping circuits to fail. Look at this torch, right? It goes perfectly fine through.

[00:10:46]Wait, what? Oh, this this is so confusing. Additionally, redirections required parts of the ALU to be changed.

[00:10:53]This clearly wasn't just a copy and paste job.

[00:10:56]>> I'm done with this, bro.

[00:10:58]>> But eventually, I got the converters to work. Instead of using one big internal clock like I had before, >> but then it it stops there. Dude, why dude? I used an external clock and pulse generator to drive the circuit instead.

[00:11:12]>> So, we just have a few repeater circuits here. I'm going to do another one actually. And now it's pulsing a shorter pulse. This is a longer pulse here.

[00:11:20]Turns into a shorter pulse on the rising edge.

[00:11:28]With the inputs done, it's time to move on to step three. Dude, it's like a little free cam. A little free cam going on. What's up? up. Oh, you can't see me crouching. I'll just do a spin. What's up? Okay. How am I supposed to do this?

[00:11:53]Here I am building the busing lines from the inputs to the AO.

[00:12:01]And since I can't use Replay Mod or Flashpack to capture these time-lapses, they're actually captured the oldfashioned way with a separate Minecraft account.

[00:12:16]And now this thing is actually finally starting to look like a calculator. Oh, this is so cool. Okay, cool stuff. After the busing lines, we started working on the input lines, which would connect to the display.

[00:12:35]Okay, Sean, you're good to go.

[00:12:38]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:12:40]>> Did you ruin it?

[00:12:41]>> This one's just fell.

[00:12:49]>> So, I just fell off the platform.

[00:12:56]>> Why?

[00:13:12]Things were moving really fast and with step three coming to a close, the next step was to convert from binary back to BCD before routing to the display.

[00:13:22]Basically just undoing step two. And that circuit looks something uh like this.

[00:13:39]Your boy is so cooked. I'm extremely exhausted and I have I'm cold. I have a sick I'm I have a cold. I'm sick. You could tell I was losing steam. My eyes are so tired.

[00:13:53]But I had to keep going. So, I built a similar circuit from step two with the same clock and shift registers, but things weren't looking good. Keep going.

[00:14:02]All the way down. All the way down. No stops. No stops. Let's keep going. Keep it going. Keep going.

[00:14:09]The shift registers weren't reliably shifting their values. And this didn't just happen with this converter, but also all other converters I previously built. Okay, I don't know why. So, we're going to have to deal with this problem later. I got to go study. Something was fundamentally wrong with this circuit and I couldn't figure it out. But running out of time, I had to call it good enough and move on to the final step.

[00:14:33]All right, it's time to do the seven segment displays.

[00:14:37]Moving on to the final step, we had to encode the display. And me and Granny worked on this throughout the entire day and night. But if you look closely, each one of these torches represents a single one-digit number. And when powering one, it lights up the correct segments to display that number.

[00:14:55]But of course, we had another issue.

[00:14:58]So, redstone lamps, they just don't exist. So, how in the world are we going to build a display without redstone lamps? The only two components we have to work with are torches and dust. So, obviously, we should make a display out of torches. But torches are so hard to see in the daytime. Fortunately, we had to compromise and build this method anyway since it was the only way.

[00:15:21]Or was it?

[00:15:28]This is seven. Yeah. So, technically a door is actually a redstone component.

[00:15:33]First, we need a lot of doors, which means we need a lot of iron. Luckily, I have iron. Oh my god, they don't stack. They actually don't stack. So, my plan was to make a door display.

[00:15:45]>> Consumed my iron. I'm not going to let that slide.

[00:15:47]>> But the door display is going to be worth it, though. And it's crazy that we're on the final step. This is the last step of the build.

[00:15:54]>> But of course, building it was never that easy.

[00:15:58]>> How?

[00:16:08]I just crafted all these doors for nothing. There was a double door bug in the game that prevented both doors from opening with the same redstone signal.

[00:16:17]>> Why would you do this to me? Oh, I forgot about that bug when the double doors in this version.

[00:16:25]There's nothing you can do about the the bug, right? I refuse I refuse to believe that there is nothing I can do. Okay, so that's not going to work. Maybe like activating it with torches does something like doing it like a different way. Not going to work. It has to be a different way. Like there's maybe you power it like from the top.

[00:16:50]Wow, that's crazy. From the sides or maybe like from torches underneath it.

[00:16:58]Theoretically, that would work. That would work. I could do that.

[00:17:12]God, this project keeps throwing curve balls. Man, I'm almost done.

[00:17:17]>> All right, time to do the displays and I'm done. Tired.

[00:17:22]Finally, by alternating the power with a torch on one door and a dust on the other, we were able to circumvent the bug.

[00:17:35]Also, each time the sun sets, 20 minutes in real life have gone by.

[00:18:04]Guys, we're very close to being completely finished with this project.

[00:18:07]We got all the seven segment displays in place. Um, I mean, it's kind of hard to tell what the numbers are, but if you look close, It's really hard to see what the numbers are, but it's okay. I'm excited to show that if you input a number, this one up top changes now. Oh my gosh, you have no idea how long this took me. Two, three, let's do eight.

[00:18:32]Oh. Oh, wait. That's not right. Seven is also not working. Okay, so two is also not working. Okay, that's supposed to be a six.

[00:18:42]And after a few bug fixes, it was done.

[00:18:44]The calculator was finished. It Wait, really? 15 times 15 in alpha Minecraft with nothing but red.

[00:18:59]Okay, all we have to do is just fix this weird thing going on with the main line that triggers the converter and then we're done. Uh okay. So let's see what's going please.

[00:19:14]That is not correct. That is not correct. The calculator was unreliable and it was because of the shift registers I neglected earlier. I'll be back.

[00:19:25]I was convinced that the design I was using was flawed since I used this guy's design from over 14 years ago. We have a huge problem. These registers, these shift registers are not working. Like, let me go ahead and give y'all an example. I have eight here, eight here.

[00:19:40]Click calculate. Check this out. Oh, what do you see there? Nothing. Nothing.

[00:19:45]There's zero here. It's not an eight.

[00:19:47]That's a zero. What's over here? No, we get a zero. It's just wild because every single button press is different. So, we need to somehow design a new shift register to save this entire project.

[00:19:59]But we still need the same lash design for the top half, which is this. Okay, this is going to be a lot harder than I'm expecting. So, I'm just going to sign off. I'll be back when I made some progress. Okay, I have done some work.

[00:20:12]This thing is insane. And it works. It's so much bigger. Basically, we input the binary number. You flick this for the clock and then boom. It's so good. And I replaced every single register one by one because I was convinced that this was the issue. This had to be the issue.

[00:20:33]I was getting desperate because the truth was I still didn't know what was wrong. But I had to change something even if that change didn't make sense.

[00:20:41]I'm so tired at this point, bro. I'm like I'm ready to be done with this project. Little more compact redstone.

[00:20:49]Look at that. H. We got nearly 100% accuracy and things are looking really, really good. I just went through all of the numbers and tested everything and it looks really good. And after all of these tests went super well, I got really excited that maybe finally after all of this, it would work. It was so close to being finished. We'll give this another shot. All right, here we go. 15* 15 in alpha Minecraft. Did it work? Oh, wait. There it goes. There we go, dude.

[00:21:18]Oh my gosh. Oh yes.

[00:21:27]273.

[00:21:31]It can't even go up to 273.

[00:21:39]It was working like 5 minutes ago.

[00:21:50]It's just wild because every single button press is different. This BCD to binary converter messed up. I don't know why it messed up. They're literally identical.

[00:22:01]Basically, it takes this clock clock generator. I need to make a clock block clock signal and switch connector.

[00:22:10]This simple circuit consists of one clock generator. Clock generator. Clock generator. I know how to do the clock generator, but pulse clock. I need to make a clock.

[00:22:24]I was taking an intro to digital circuits class at the time and I remembered something in my textbook.

[00:22:30]From the first button press, the time it takes for this bit to move over by one is this amount. The clock to repeat this action is shown above where each rising edge begins a new process. However, because the clock and button are asynchronous, meaning the clock and the button press are independent from one another, we can have a case where we activate the process in the middle of a clock cycle. This means the latch doesn't have enough time to process before the next rising edge, creating this weird glitch.

[00:23:03]So to fix this once we start the process we also start the clock effectively synchronizing the circuit.

[00:23:14]So it works. It it literally it literally works. Oh wait, I just broke a piece of redstone. Uh and I'm on my alt account. That's not good.

[00:23:26]So it works. It literally works. It's it's awesome. And there's glitch. Come on. I got to see where to walk. This it works. Uh, and it's awesome. Around two years ago, my friend RecRap had made a calculator in the modern version of the game, dude. Okay. Okay. This is starting to look pretty sick, bro.

[00:23:45]>> So, I showed him my version because the calculator was finally finished. And this was his reaction. Oh my gosh, dude.

[00:23:53]This is so cool. What? Doors. Wait, that's crazy. Oh my gosh, dude. This is crazy. And like, okay, to be honest, like it already looks like maybe even more organized than my calculator. I'm just looking at it. Like, it's dirt and cobblestone. And the door display, that's crazy. That's ingenuity, bro.

[00:24:12]>> Crazy. This is all just torches and dust.

[00:24:16]>> Yeah.

[00:24:16]>> Like, you literally just build repeaters out of torches. You build Oh my gosh, that's like crazy. Let's see if it gives us the right number. 225.

[00:24:31]15 times 15 in alpha Minecraft with nothing but redstone dust and redstone torches. See? Yep, there it goes. There we go, dude. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we dug all this out by hand. Let's see what we got to do next.

[00:24:52]My eyes are so tired. Jeez, look at that. Look how beautiful it is.

[00:25:09]Dude, have you seen that one calculator that the guy built? Like one of the first ones like this looks >> really That's cool.

[00:25:19]>> 225.

[00:25:23]Yes.

[00:25:31]Yes.

[00:25:35]And yes, this video did take over a year to make with 370 gigabytes worth of footage and a total of 325 hours of work. So, if you could leave a like, that would be appreciated. 6884 made some of the music in this video, so definitely check out his work in the description. Watch one of these videos next. And thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.

[00:25:57]And goodbye.