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From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.edu
Subject: Re: Computer Organization Text Needed
Message-ID: <12458@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 7 Sep 88 15:45:37 GMT
References: <110@ms3.UUCP> <12311@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <17982@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (RAMontante)
Organization: malkaryotic
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seeger@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Charles Seeger) writes:
>jeschke@iuvax.UUCP (Eric Jeschke) writes:

    ["The Art of Digital Design", 2nd ed., Prosser, F., and Winkel, D.]

>>This book provides a CS rather than an engineering approach to hardware
>>construction.  It has excellent sections on Karnaugh mapping and Boolean
>>algebra.
>>
>>Eric jeschke@iuvax.cs.indiana.eu
>
>This is a good book and is used in our undergraduate logic design class.
>It teaches mixed logic design, which IMHO is the only way to go.  It's

Right on!

>not so good on computer organization, however -- it uses the PDP-8 as

Here at IU the book is closely tied to a lab in which the students
build PDP-8s (in 74LS technology).  The design was "reverse engineered"
from specifications of the instruction set, I believe, and demonstrates
mixed logic quite thoroughly.  Toward the end of the course they design
and implement additions to the basic PDP-8, such as a stack.  Last year
we added a module in which they put together a small system based on a
6809 cpu; total chip count is lower than for the PDP-8's 4K memory
circuit.  (BTW:  the PDP-8 had a really amazing interpreter, called FOCAL,
that was supposed to blow BASIC out of the water.  Syntax that makes APL
look readable, but it can calculate factorial(300) (E+615 for an exponent)
in that dinky little 4K, and I'm trying to live with 640K...)

What do you want for computer organization?  To wire wrap the 80386
architecture?  A homebrew Cray maybe?  :-)

>a design example.  There is a new edition, which I haven't seen, so the
>appropriate disclaimers apply.

The new edition is basically an expansion of the old -- it updates some
of the material toward the end of the book (sorry, I can't remember
what now, as the first edition is hazy in my mind).  Authors now listed
alphabetically.

No disclaimers, I was the lab assistant for one of the authors two years
in a row and I'm burned out on little scraps of wire by now -- like some
of those students' boards :-)
-- 
--    bob,mon			(bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu)
--    "Aristotle was not Belgian..."	- Wanda