Clock

A free-running square wave source: pick a frequency, and it drives high and low forever.

clock is the part that gives a circuit something moving with no processor anywhere in it: a divider chain, a blinking LED, or the input to a 555 astable, all without a single line of firmware.

Pins

Pin	What it does
OUT	High and low at hz, driven at a normal logic output impedance.

Properties

hz: the frequency in hertz. 1 by default; a 555's replacement for teaching a divider chain wants something in the tens or hundreds of hertz.

What the model gets right

It is a teaching part, deliberately: no supply pins, drives from nowhere the way an ideal gate does, and its edges land exactly where the frequency says they should, with none of the jitter a real oscillator has.

What it does not model

No duty cycle control (it is a plain 50/50 square wave), no rise or fall time, and no supply dependence. A clock needs no power pins because it is a teaching source, not a chip. No jitter, no drift, no startup time and no phase noise either: the edges land on exact multiples of the period for ever, which no real oscillator does. It always starts low at time zero, and there is no way to stop, gate or phase it.

Common mistakes

Expecting it to behave like a chip's own internal oscillator, complete with startup time or jitter. It is closer to a bench function generator set to square wave. For that, with more control over shape and amplitude, see the signal generator.

See it in action

Binary counter and Binary clock both drive a whole divider chain from one clock part with no board in the circuit at all. Open them from /templates.