There'll always be readers who demand physical realism. In my writing, I've found that the way around it can be a "less is more" approach. The less I go into the physics of something, the more likely the reader is to accept it. What's more, if the characters accept it, the readers will be more likely to, as well. Just make the human interaction with the thing (clockwork robot, steam zeppelin, what have you) believable, and you'll have a believable steampunk creation.

EDIT: and, now that I read Mike's post, I'd add that if the thing is described in a sensorily satisfactory way, it's going to be fine for the reader. Who cares whether the thing has the processor capability to handle its function? We wanna know that it sounds like what we think it should sound like, that it looks sufficiently cool to hold our attention, and that it smells sufficiently steampunky....whatever steampunk smells like (white pine and axle grease, perhaps?)




Bill Bittner wrote:
> For example, take a clockwork robot. In order to walk on two legs, it would need to process a lot of information. And a clockwork brain may not be able to process this much information, due to friction. Plus, if it's energy source is purely spring-based, such a source would scarcely be enough to make the robot walk more than a few steps, let alone process the information it needs to take those few steps.