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I was looking into the schematic of the Arduino Uno Rev3 particularly the built-in on board LED (connected to pin 13) and was curious about what was happening.

Here you can see pin 5 of port B being connected to what appears to be a comparator which is in feedback with its own output.

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Why not just connect it via a 1K resistor to yellow LED L?

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That would load the pin significantly if it was configured as an input.

Using half of a dual op-amp as a buffer is a reasonable design choice, when you need the other half elsewhere. Might not be optimal in all cases, but it's not unreasonable.

Another choice might be to use a 2N7002, with or without a series gate resistor and an LMV321 single op-amp for the other requirement.

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The LMV358 is an opamp, not a comparator, and that's called the "voltage follower" configuration. It's functioning as a buffer so that SCK isn't loaded directly by the LED.

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