Hi Noel,
I agree wholeheartedly with regard to "A DEC view of hardware systems
design" it is a great book and a must-have for anyone interested in DEC
hardware.
Now, my Computer Structures: Principles and Examples is a 1982 printing.
I see there are two very similarly titled but discrete books by Bell et al.
One is Computer Structures: Principles and Examples and one is Computer
Structures: Readings and Examples.
I had thought Readings & Examples was the older one and Principles &
Examples was the newer one but I am not certain.
The list of titles in the McGraw-Hill Computer Science Series at the front
of the book, implies both were published concurrently, though I am not
clear that this was actually the case.
The two books you have are both titled Principles and Examples and cover
different material?
Just curious... As you note, the 1982 printing includes PDPs, VAX, IBM
360, IBM S/38, Cray, CDC, Burroughs, STARAN, Illiac IV, AM29xx, PIC (?!)
etc. Runs the whole gamut from mainframe to micro. It never fails to pique
my interest, reading about all the different approaches to computer
architecture that were tried.
If the earlier printing is materially different I'll have to add it to my
watchlist. I have the IBM's Early Computers text on MIT Press which gives
pretty good coverage to the pre-S/360 IBM world.
Best,
Sean
On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 6:08 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
From: Sean
Caron
"Computer Engineering: A DEC view of
hardware systems design" by Bell
et al. offers a really nice look at the historical origins of all the
various PDP lines.
A 'must buy' for all DEC enthusiasts, IMO.
Another very interesting Bell et al. text that I
enjoy is "Computer
Structures: Principles and Examples" though it is (very) much less
DEC-centric.
There are two editions (at least - I have a '71 and an '82), and they cover
very different machines. E.g. the '71 has Whirlwind, the 7094, STRETCH,
etc,
which the '82 doesn't. And of course the '82 has a whole bunch of later
machines which the '71 doesn't have - AMD29xx, various micros, Cray, VAX,
etc,
etc.
Noel