Hi Nick (and friends)
Following the thread, I see several different parts of the circuit
being described, but all on the right track.
First, to correct a typo in one of the other replies, 10(base10) in
binary should be 1010 (not 0101) a six would be 0110. Decoding that
for divide by 6 or divide by 10 is about the way it was described.
Once you get all the digits counting and dividing right, the answer
to your next question will be to use a BCD to seven segment decoder
such as the 7446 or 7448. That will do the translation for the usual
square number displays you're use to seeing on clocks. Then again, if
this is mostly a learning exercise, we can do the same thing with a
whole bunch of gates.
Before going into that, or even the dividers, you need to get your
input working consistently.
You said it was sometimes clocking several times when you push the
button on the clock input. This is quite common with mechanical
switches. They tend to `bounce'. Usually too fast to see, the
spring inside the switch will cause the contacts to strike several
times before they settle down. Assuming you have the pull-up resistor
on the CP input as recommended in an earlier reply, this is normal
and will go away when you add the pulse circuit to get it running on
its own.
One minor nit in the recommendation to feed it with 5 volt AC. You
will want to use a diode to get half-wave DC to the CP input. AC will
swing negative on half the cycle and burn up your chip. To square it
up a bit, I'd use another gate before the input. This assumes too
that you're plugged into the wall to get AC in the first place. I'm
guessing you're actually powering this from a battery or small DC
power supply.
Let's get it simply counting first, and worry about accuracy a bit
later. I like the suggestion of using a 555 type clock chip. In it's
simplest (monostable) mode, it can sit in between your button and the
CP input, so it gives you ONE consistent pulse each time you hit the
button. A resistor plus a capacitor set the length of the pulse.
After that, hooking its output back to its own input will make it
pulse repeatedly. The nice thing here is that depending on the size
of the resistor and capacitor, it can be run at any speed from
hours-per-pulse up to so-fast-you-can't-see-it.
Have Fun,
_Bill
