MIPS I-IV instruction set standards

[Robert Ferguson]

> On Mar 7, 2017, at 3:42 PM, Maciej W. Rozycki via cctech <cctech at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 28 Feb 2017, Angelo Papenhoff via cctech wrote:
> 
>> I'm wondering where the MIPS I-IV standards that are referenced
>> everywhere are defined. I was able to actually find what seems to be the
>> IV standard [1] but found no such thing for I-III. I didn't even find
>> any bibliographic references to them. Did they only exist as printed
>> books and nobody bothered to scan them? Or are they under copyright?
>> Would be nice to have them accessible somewhere.
>> 
>> [1]
>> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15740-f97/public/doc/mips-isa.pdf
> 
> 
< snip >

> I have seen a copy of the original R2000 manual once, in the form of a 
> collection of pages in a ring binder.  That copy may have been lost since.  
> Silicon manufacturers like IDT, LSI Logic, Performance Semiconductor or 
> Siemens published their R2000/R3000 (and R2010/R3010 FPA) implementation 
> manuals though that may serve as a reference; you should be able to track 
> down scanned copies online.

The book “MIPS RISC Architecture” by Gerry Kane (ISBN 0-13-584293-X), copyright 1989 by MIPS Computer Systems, has the following blurb as the preface:

“This book is a comprehensive reference for the MIPS RISC architecture. It describes the functional characteristics and capabilities of the R2000/R3000 Processors and the R2010/R3020 floating point accelerators.”

I suspect this is as close to a publicly available architecture reference that exists for that generation of MIPS processors.

- Rob