i don't know how old you are, but here's the basics unless you have more questions (feel free!).
people use base ten math since we have ten fingers. this is called decimal math. "dec-" means ten. computers use "binary" math which only uses zeros and ones. "bi-" means "two" like in two wheels on a bicycle. "trinary" and "ternary" are used to describe base 3 math which uses 0, 1 and 2. tri means "three" like in "tricycle".
the trinary counter is sort of like a virtual computer that you can build inside the Laser Tank game. it uses pulses (laser shots) from a simulated clock drive to run the trinary "cells" through cycles. there are a couple different types of clock drives that do more or less the same thing. as each trinary cell or "digit" goes through its own cycle, it is computing the input pulses. every third input pulse results in a single output pulse, so each cell is able to count three different digits or states and then resets to 0 (0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, ...). the next cell counts the number of times the previous cell goes through a cycle, so it is like a more significant digit. it's like "carry the one" when we learn to do addition in columns.
"parallel" basically means all the digits are keeping track seperately at the same time. "trit" refers to the information contained in each cell. if there were 6 cells or digits, then the 6-trit trinary counter could be in any one of 3x3x3x3x3x3=729 states or in other words be able to count up to 729.
here's base ten number followed by equivalent base 3 numbers:
0 - 0
1 - 1
2 - 2
3 - 10
4 - 11
5 - 12
6 - 20
7 - 21
8 - 22
9 - 30
some simple levels 294 to 299 in special.lvl might help - they demonstrate
some base 3 math including counting, additing and multiplying. the hard
levels are in challenge II.
hope this helps,
Steve (Horst)