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From: rex@cs.su.oz (Rex Di Bona)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Re: r3000 and r4000 Arch books for public eyes yet?
Message-ID: <2291@cluster.cs.su.oz.au>
Date: 12 Apr 91 06:08:14 GMT
References: <00946FC9.05514960@uno.edu>
Sender: news@cluster.cs.su.oz.au
Reply-To: rex@cluster.cs.su.oz (Rex Di Bona)
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 33

In article <00946FC9.05514960@uno.edu> des@uno.edu (Dan Smith) writes:
> 
> Has MIPS (or anyone else for that matter) published any 'User' guides
> to MIPS R3000 and R4000 chips yet?  I.E. is there a public ISBN number
> for these beasts that we (the downtrodden masses) can use to enlighten
> ourselves on the more arcain facts about these chip sets?

The R3000 is (from a user's point of view) the same as the R2000 and the
complete coverage is in "mips RISC ARCHITECTURE" by Gerry Kane (the newer
versions now mention both the R2000 and the R3000).
ISBN 0-13-584749-4
Published by Prentice Hall

Does MIPS still have (ever had??) the policy of distributing one of these
with each machine? We got a whole stack when we bought a number of machines,
and given the perpetual calls for SPARC architecture manuals I think
this is (would be??) a good idea.

Now, the R4000, I'm drooling on the keyboard waiting for some real
documentation about it's instructions set, currently we have to be content
to know that it's upwardly compatible with the R2000/R3000 (and I hope
R6000)

The R6000 uses the mipsII instruction set, which seems to have a few more
opcodes, mainly to deal with co-processor stuff, and double word load
and store for fp, but I haven't found anything definite about it either :-(

All in all, it is easy to know about the core of the architecture, and the
Kane book is very well written, but I'd love to see a new edition with the
R4000/R6000 in it :-)
--------
Rex di Bona (rex@cs.su.oz.au)
Penguin Lust is NOT immoral