Hacker News Reader

Comment by markus_zhang | Hacker News Reader

Sharing this as I'm curious about:

1. Is there any similar books about a making of a computer which does not shy away the technical details

2. I'm particularly interested in the Microcode part. I'm taking nand2tetris but I couldn't identify which part I wrote the microcode, or is it non existent in the course?

View on HN

A classic book about how to design a microprogrammed CPU was "Mick & Brick", which was published by AMD in 1980 and now it is freely available at bitsavers:

http://www.bitsavers.org/components/amd/bitslice/Mick_Bit-Sl...

This book explains how to design miroprogrammed CPUs with the AMD 2900 series integrated circuits, which was the most popular method for designing PDP-11 clones around 1980, before the monolithic microprocessors from Intel and Motorola became powerful enough to replace the minicomputers.

Even if the bit-slice circuits like the AMD 2900 series have been obsolete for many decades, understanding how a CPU could be designed with them can enable anyone to make now a similar CPU design, but implemented in an FPGA.

The datasheets of the 2900 series, which can be useful for extra details, can be found in the same AMD directory at bitsavers.org.

However, "Mick & Brick" is not for complete beginners. It presupposes familiarity with logical circuit design at the gate level.

"Mick & Brick" - wow! Haven't thought about that one for decades. It was, along with the Apple II schematics, very important in my intro to computers in high school.

https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20P...

Oh wow. Seeing the parent post I started musing about Mick and Brick. Surprised I' only the second person who had the same thought. Still have a copy on my shelf.

The AMD 2900 was, in fact, how the Xerox Star was built. You'll find quite a bit about that choice in Inventing the Future but certainly not gate-level circuit design. As you implied, they made that decision just before decent microprocessors came along in quantity. Even at the time, there were questions about whether it was the right decision.

Mesa was a virtual machine as well as a language, and its opcodes were selected after seeing what Mesa source code was actually written. The goal was to minimize the code size, and then implement the opcodes in microcode.

After the book came out, my friend Jerry and I wrote a lengthy piece [1] about what Xerox should have done, and this time hindsight is allowed.

[1] https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight

“some IP may have been repurposed from the Data General Nova” - the default/bring-up Alto microcode* was/is more or less Nova compatible which is hardly IP IMHO. Different hardware by far and never DG software. I think the Nova was the console controller for the PARC MAXC PDP-10 clone hence their familiarity with the architecture.

*Altos and successor D-machines are soft machines.

Thank you so much. Indeed the book is a bit tough for me. I'm going back to nand2tetris and hopefully grab a proper beginner tech book afterwards.

It's not a technical book, but Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft[0] compares favorably to The Soul of a New Machine in my opinion. It was originally published in 1994 and reissued in 2008. I haven't see reissue but I know it has an added "Afterward" section that would probably be interesting to read.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1416925.Show_Stopper_

Soul of a New Machine and Showstopper are very much cut from the same cloth.

For anyone interested, we did a Command Line Heroes podcast episode on Soul of a New Machine a few years back. https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minic...

I was actually interviewed for the episode but I got left on the cutting room floor because we were able to arrange more interviews with people directly involved whereas I was just second-hand.

Thanks! I'm going to buy this book too as I'm more of a software guy~~(hw is more fascinating though)

/Racing The Beam/ isn't exactly about the creation of the Atari VCS (aka the 2600). It's more about the software side, but scratches a similar itch for computing "pop" history that doesn't shy away from the technical details.

If video game creators fit the bill, check out "Masters of Doom" or "Blood Sweat and Pixels".

And for a few more in that vein: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/11/07/the-10-bes...

Bryan Cantrill (of Oxide Computer) and co did a podcast a couple of months ago recommending books of a similar vein[1].

I’m not sure if it was mentioned in that episode, but they did another one on the book Losing the Signal about the ride and fall of Blackberry[2] which is worth checking out.

[1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/book-in-the... [2] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/losing-the-...

I asked for recommendations in a recent thread, and was pointed at "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed", which was pretty good (although not remotely as well-written as "The Soul of a New Machine"), and am reading "Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation" currently.

I think there are few books that match both the significance and are as well-written.

You might be interested in this Computer History Museum oral history of Gary Davidian, who among other things (1) worked on the "rival project" from Soul (2) was hired by NEC to bolster their lawsuit defense by writing microcode for the Intel 8086 (3) wrote the 680x0 emulator Apple launched their PowerPC line with.

Transcript: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Go9D1kLNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVEKt_H3FsI

There's lots of interesting stuff from this era in the CHM's oral histories.

Thanks! Looks like a gold mine~~

> ...particularly interested in the Microcode...

Structured Computer Organization by Andrew S. Tanenbaum has a good coverage of microcode and in a very friendly writing style.

Thanks! I heard about this book a few times on HN. It is on the shortlist after nand2tetris.

Some recommendations from a comment a few years back, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15748285

Not quite SoaNM nail-biter, but you could try "Computer Engineering" by Gordon Bell et al (the blue book).

2. Ben Eater’s 8-bit CPU has some microcode in it for some of the instructions.

Revolution in the Valley, by Andy Hertzfeld

Reply on news.ycombinator.com