Counting on the flip (flop) side.

By Jim Weir

So far in our investigation of digital logic, we’ve used what is called small scale integration, or SSI for short. Now it is time to ramp it up a bit and use some medium scale integration (MSI) devices. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to push a button and have a digital device remember your settings? Sort of like the push-button memory on some high-end transceivers? There is a device that will do that, and its tongue-twisting name is bistable multivibrator. Most of the world knows it by its common name, flip-flop.

The most common and easy to obtain (they used to have them at The Shack) D(ata)-type flip-flop is the CMOS 4013 (See Figure 1). They come two inside of a 14-pin DIP (dual inline package) for 50¢ each package and they work like this: …

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