I head downstairs and - my clock is malfunctioning. It's firing every few seconds. The problem is that two of the component clocks have gone to always on and only one clock is still ticking.

A digression on clock mechanics: Factorial clocks fire when all of their component clocks are on. To be useful, the component clocks need to be mostly off, obviously. The "standard" clock design of 1 torch and one or more repeaters is on half the time, so you have to use something different, or filter the output to be on less.

I had used all-repeater clocks. You can start an all-repeater clock with a brief redstone jolt and the jolt will cycle around the clock. This can be a short jolt, so a factorial design works. The problem is that additional jolts can alter the cycle. Worse, if the clock bridges a chunk boundary and only part of the clock is loaded you can have the pulse totally disrupted. "Standard" clocks can have similar problems, but the internal torch power will restore normal behavior under most circumstances.

So, to make things more robust, I switch to standard torch-and-repeater clocks and add edge detectors to the output so I'll get an on signal only when the clock switches to on, not for the entire on part of the cycle.



The clock room looks different after this. For one, it's bigger; the clocks got bigger from fitting in the torch and I also had to make room for more logic to detect the pulse changes in the component clocks. Here I'm standing on one of the clocks, with the pulse detector logic ahead of me and another clock to my right.



Here's a picture of the edge detector logic (taken later when I realized I'd forgotten to take pics). I figure out more of how the timing is working. The torches seem to take 1 redstone tick off the pulses, so I have to make the pulses longer to make it all work. This is why I was getting much longer cycles than I calculated before - the effective pulses were shorter than I'd though. Armed with this knowledge, I set the pulse lengths to fix the irregular cycle problem I'd had before.

I also redesign the clock combination slightly. Before I had all three clocks feed into one gate. Now I have two clocks feed into one gate, and the output for that feeds into a gate with the third. This means I can bleed off a high-frequency clock (from any component), a medium-frequency clock (about 30 seconds) from the 2-clock combo, and a long-frequency clock (about 5 minutes) from the 3-clock combo.



Since I can't find a village, I have to collect a potato from a zombie. I go to the spawner room and take out some torches to let me turn the spawner on and off by removing one torch. Some zombies spawn and annoy me during this operation.



I rebuild for a standard "swat their feet" design. Spawning is really slow, however. It takes about 8 minutes to get a half-stack of rotten flesh. Finally,



I have my potato! (along with 2 shovels and a gold helmet).

I plant it on some dirt and wait for it to grow.

I'm also going to use the clock to control an Infernal Furnace. This is a Thaumcraft furnace that provides its own fuel (magically) although it processes things rather slowly. I'm running short of coal and I really need it.

The Infernal Furnace needs 12 obsidian, 12 Nether Brick, and 1 lava bucket, so I head out to the ravine to get the obsidian and lava. While I'm there, I go ahead an extend a mining tunnel I have beyond it. I break into a cave system and secure one tunnel in it.



It's chock full of many different kinds of ore, for some reason. I also find my first Perdito shard! After collecting them all, my inventory is jammed and I head back.



I need to fill up my wand to make the Infernal Furnace so I take a quick jaunt outside, using my map markers to guide me to the nodes.

When I get home, a quick wave of the wand (using 100 Vis) and I have my furnace.



I chuck in almost an entire stack of Iron Dust and several stacks of assorted cobblestone. I have a dispenser above it, pointing down, to dump the items into the furnace, and I'm driving it with a feed from one of my clocks. As soon as it starts, I realize the noise annoys me and will drive me nuts if it never stops. So I need to put in a little redstone logic so in only dispenses when there's something to dispense.  The redstone is simple, but I'm really squeezed for space and it takes me several tries to get it working. Finally it's on, and I have an automatic on, automatic off, self-fueled furnace.

Next episode: Essentia and Golems.