- Analyzing the vintage 8008 processor from die photos: its unusual counters (righto.com)
The revolutionary Intel 8008 microprocessor is 45 years old today (March 13, 2017), so I figured it’s time for a blog post on reverse-engineering its internal circuits. One of the interesting things about old computers is how they implemented things in unexpected ways, and the 8008 is no exception. Compared to modern architectures, one unusual feature of the 8008 is it had an on-chip stack for subroutine calls, rather than storing the stack in RAM. And instead of using normal binary counters for the stack, the 8008 saved a few gates by using shift-register counters that generated pseudo-random values. In this article, I reverse-engineer these circuits from die photos and explain how they work.
- Men at Arms (Wikipedia)
Men at Arms is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 15th book in the Discworld series, first published in 1993. It is the second novel about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch on the Discworld. Lance-constable Angua von Überwald, later in the series promoted to the rank of Sergeant, is introduced in this book. Lance-constable (in the course of the novel promoted to Acting-constable) Detritus is introduced as a new member of the watch as well, though he had already appeared in other Discworld novels, most notably in Moving Pictures. Also notable is the only appearance of Lance-constable Cuddy (also promoted to Acting-constable).