> > > It's even more fun to know it at the gate level, or at least at the IC
> > > pin level.
> > Life isn't long enough to understand a Pentium-class processor at the gate
> > level. At least, not long enough to do that and other fun things as well.
> Understanding a Pentium probably isn't fun, but understanding other CPUs
> to gate level is about the most fun thing I can think of...
> I guess I'll stick to PERQs, PDP8's, PDP11's, etc. Those are simple
> enough for mortals like me to understand completely...
I'm still hoping to get a gate level drawin/description of a 6502.
> > Of course, not having enough time to fully understand it is no excuse for
> > not *wanting* the gate-level drawings. But you're not going to get those
> > out of either Intel or AMD.
> No, alas....
> Still, even understanding what all the chips in the PC do, and what
> signals to expect at every pin, is nice. Probably not so useful on a
> modern machine with a few big chips and not much else, but on this
> machine, with a considerable number of TTL devices, it's worth doing.
Even this modern big chips are a lot of fun to learn about - and it
even has practical meaning - if you want to overclock your system
(Since my 486-50 I tried to overclock all my PCs - the actual K6-366
is running at 417 MHz right now), you need these data sheeds/handbooks
do develop a strategy beyond just jumpering a higher bus clock and/or
change BIOS setings - from the memory control alone you can sometimes
gain more power than from overclocking the CPU (Tweak Bios offers a
lot of this now for everyone with a minimunm of technical knowledge
without reading the manuals - but thats less fun :).
Also if you look in deep, these chip(set)s are not as x86 dependant
as one might assume - depending of the CPU you want to use sometimes
one or two small PAL could be enough to use them - and PCI bus, memory
controler, ISA bridges, or ser/par I/O keyboard and mouse are things
you might need on any system. In fact, the Milan uses a PC chipset
with it's 68040 CPU.
I like to think (read: dream) of building an actual usable 'PC' with
different (unusual) CPUs - What about a 65816 (with 32 Bit data bus)
using a 486 chipset ... etc - or a design for a PC with exchangable
CPUs ... just for playing around.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Wed Jan 20 1999 - 11:08:35 GMT