Paper Computer

A most interesting thread, and I've enjoyed reading/studying all of the replied links.

While a tactical demonstrator such as the CARDIAC is ideal, some related topics occured to me that others may find interesting:

1. The 16Fxxx series of Microchip brand RISC microprocessors have a very small instruction set - only about 37 instructions and a Harvard architecture.
2. The basic HP Calculators (HP48 and HP35s) are stack based and programmable machines that have a very simple architecture. The HP35s is a relatively low cost (under 60USD), 4 level stack RPN machine with over 32K of RAM (for program and data memory), 26 alpha- adressed data memories and several hundred index-addressed data memories. The HP48 is a more general (out of production, but easily available on ebay), stack based RPL machine (very similar to FORTH) with a graphic display and RS232 and IR interfaces.

TomCee (former Detroit, USA FIG Administrator)

I'm a EE, so we didn't use Knuth's book (whereas I believe the CS guys did) but instead used Hennessy & Patterson's "Computer Architecture" (very popular in EE departments...).

I've seen Knuth's book referenced many times but I'd have to admit to never actually paging through a copy; I should do that someday!

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:02:48 GMT, I said, "Pick a card, any card" and Rich Grise instead replied:

I feel left out.

-- Ray