[sdiy] Slightly OT : Intel i960

[Magnus Danielson]

From: "Jay Schwichtenberg" <jays at aracnet.com>
Subject: RE: [sdiy] Slightly OT : Intel i960
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 14:51:05 -0800

> Or how about the AMD 2900 series 4 bit bit slice. There was a book
> "Bit-Slice Microprocessor Design" that went with it. I always thought
> the names of the authors fit the book: Mick & Brick.

The AMD 2900 is cool, but slow. Also, it's not very cool either... it WAS
cool onces, but then only as a construction block and not in a
thermically sence. Later came those which had builtin register-files, and
that helped keeping speed up and chip-count down. There where a whole
series of chips which helped you build microcoded CPUs so that you could
to quite complex projects without having to invent the whole world from
scratch. These days the AMD 2900 is not so complex so that there is even
used as an exercise example when you want to learn program VHDL code.
It would be nice to hack up a computer using those 29xx series components
in VHDL form and then glue it together. That would be simple enought to
do since neither of them are very complex.

If you want a challenge, build a computer based on 74S181's or some
faster variant. You could get the ECL variants 10181 or 100181 or maybe
even lay your hands on the GaAs variants if you can... ;O)

Cheers,
Magnus - who deeply studied the AMD 2900 once upon a time