What's the easiest way to test the effects of chunk unloading on redstone circuits?

Question

I'm building a long-distance signal transmission line for a railroad system. I think it will work because the player moves through chunks with the signal, but I want to test what happens to the circuit at the origin of the signal after the chunk unloads and reloads. I haven't built the real thing yet; I'm still sketching in a Creative Mode world.

I know that F3+A is supposed to reload chunks, but it's not clear to me which chunks are reloaded and to what degree.

What's the easiest way to set up a circuit, force the chunk to reload, and see what the effects are?

Answer 1

Reloading chunks via F3-A should have no effect on in-progress redstone circuits. Unloading chunks, however can freeze your circuits and cause blocks not to update or continue. There are two ways to unload a chunk to test how your circuit reacts to the freezing. The first one is to quit to menu and reload your game, the second is to go 128 blocks away from the edge of the chunk you wish to test.

Keep in mind that to be sure of the reliability you will need to test at every redstone state your build uses.

Answer 2

one way i could think to try, is to have a loopback at intervals with breaks in between (such as 1/chunk) that lead to something such as a redstone lamp to tell you how far the redstone is reaching, then, once the redstone lamp shuts off for longer than normal, speed down to the end (as fast as you can to catch up with the potentially still moving circuit) and then you'll know if redstone hitting an unloaded chunk stops the flow of redstone, similarly, you could place something such as a redstone torch and move away from it, laying down a redstone trail, regularly placing the lamps and repeaters (again, i'd suggest 1/chunk) and after a good distance, the lamps may or may not deactivate due to the unloading redstone torch, and if they do, you then know how far your long distance redstone can reach without a torch to restart the process

Answer 3

update 1.6 has made it so redstone updates if you enter a chunck. you should not have a problem at all. if still. try to time out so the redstone travels right next to you. (if you need to go in the same direction of the redstone signal.) else you can make a few stops underway so the end of the track is loaded when you ride on it. then when getting into the next track you just reactivate the redstone.