simsim314 wrote:biggiemac wrote:We have stable LWSS->G, right?
I don't think it's better than this one.
I might not be remembering a recent development in *WSS-to-G technology, but the most recent discussion I can find is from
back in 2009. For X-to-*WSS, there are
some other experiments in old messages, but nothing that seems significantly smaller than the new pi-to-LWSS. Probably they could be rebuilt smaller again now -- and certainly
circuits that recover faster are easy now.
(Not really relevant, since it would require a periodic converter -- but there's also
this way to collide any *WSS with a Herschel, and get the same glider out...)
Almost certainly this latest syringe-assisted LWSS-to-H device can be made to recover in less than 500 ticks, and quite possibly even less than 400 ticks, at the cost of more complexity and a larger bounding box. The trick will be to bounce the glider around and hit some sacrificial bait object that makes a B-heptomino in the right place to feed the Herschel-to-beehive converter... while simultaneously getting another signal out (maybe a glider from an R64 conduit, instead of the F116?) and routing it around to rebuild the bait.
It would be interesting if this could be done with the G->block conduit, the block being the bait, and a glider hitting it to produce a pi, which is run through a pi-to-H to feed the H-to-beehive. If that's not complicated enough, we could add another stage... it would look ridiculous, but the repeat time would probably go down a little more.
I don't think anyone has had a fresh look at block-to-pi-to-Herschel converters for a while. Last time I did a review was a
long time ago, when I was designing the ladder circuit for the original
prototype universal constructor.
One of the things I noticed is that it's possible to catch a glider and make a boat-bit, hit it with another glider to make a block (said glider would otherwise safely pass by the boat-bit site), and then hit it with a third glider to produce a pi explosion, which could be Spartanly converted to a Herschel somehow, with the circuits staying out of the gliders' way.
I forget exactly which known pi-to-H mechanism it was, but it would probably be easy to rediscover. At the time it turned out that three gliders was too complicated -- it was easier to use the two-gliders mechanism that's in the prototype U.C. ladder. But a lot has changed recently; it might be worth a fresh look.