20 May
1999
20 May
'99
1:17 a.m.
On 19 May 99 at 18:58, Tony Duell wrote:
I don't like minis _because_ they're big, I like them because they're
made out of simple components that I can understand, like NAND gates and
flip-flops, and all the connections to these gates and flip-flops are
accessible on pins of chips (or of transistors or valves :-)). From what
you say below, I suspect you have similar likings...
Yes, elegance and simplicity of design attracts me in all things.
The one I have is the "Processor Maintenance Manual" Vol 1 . A lovely
book.
One of my most prized computer texts. No comparison to most of the badly
written, mispelled, an in many cases uninformative texts that pass for manuals
these days.
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com
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I do consider it 'collecting', don't
worry. I guess I just prefer large
boards of TTL that I can understand to large ASICs that I can't....
-tony
As I said I'm not from Texas, so BIG don't mean shit to me.
The Dec PDP8/e attraction goes way back to my digital course when a friend
gave me a DEC 8/e maintenance manual which outlined the CPU processes with the
The 8/e maintenance manual is one of the best hardware manuals that I
own. It describes how the 8/e (and its memory + peripherals, the full set
is 3 books) work at gate level. And it's clear!.
It's a very understandable description of a real processor that runs real
programs. I learnt a heck of a lot from these books.
-tony