[ranch vermin]

Let me nudge you in the direction of doing some general reading about electronics and computers before you ask more questions in this vein.

I guess your talking to me there,  yes back to study i go.

[LOCKSUIT]

lol ranch she is talking to me at the end...


"Just because your processor can simulate how a high-voltage power supply circuit would behave, does not mean the processor is physically capable of outputting 100 Volts!"

Woh hoh ho! You got me there! What was I thinking lol...You can simulate a transformer, but no transformer! WTF!

Ok I can't be THAT stupid, somethins up. What I was thinking is, ranch wants to get his AI and motors to work, rights, so if he needed a timer then well, he can simulate one and get the output from the processor, in theory. Maybe even download the code. Fairly simple. Same for analog and brains. But I didn't say transformer! Lol.

So I was right then...

However.... If he ran it in a simulation then.........hehe TRANSFORMER!

[WriterOfMinds]

Okay Locksuit, I may have misunderstood you.  At the beginning you seemed to be wondering why any type of circuit besides a processor had a reason for existing, so I thought you were asking, "but why don't we just simulate everything?"

My point about analog remains valid; sometimes there are good reasons for having real analog components, instead of trying to simulate changes to the analog signal.  Also, if you're going to turn digital (from the processor) into real analog, you need a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) circuit.  A processor might come with some of these inside its chip, but there are always a limited number of them.  There are times when it might make more sense to do things in analog to begin with, than to do them inside the processor and add a ton of DACs.

You can get a processor to produce an oscillator/timer output, like that of the 555 Timer.  However, there are still good reasons to use a plain old oscillator circuit, sometimes.

* Your processor needs an oscillator input (for its clock signal) before it can produce oscillator outputs.  So, you need an oscillator no matter what.  (Unless you get a processor that has an "internal oscillator," which means you get the processor and its clock generator in the same chip.)
* Processors have to be programmed.  If you want to get an oscillating signal quickly, without messing with code and the process of loading it on the processor, you may find the oscillator circuit is easier to deal with.
* Processors only run so fast ... perhaps more importantly, they only have so many output pins ... if your processor is doing many other things in your system, such that it is "too busy" to generate all the timer signals you need, you might want to outsource that work to a simpler chip.
* Maybe your system is so simple that it doesn't even need a processor.  In that case, why have a processor if a 555 timer will do the job?