HACKER Q&A
📣 deepbluesome

Is there any book like: from ohms law to 8 bit computer


I wish to learn things like logic gate, adder, etc.


  👤 ThrowawayR2 Accepted Answer ✓
A single book? There's a long, long way between Ohm's Law and building an 8-bit processor.

Maybe start with "Practical Electronics for Inventors" or "The Art of Electronics" to get the electronics background. Then go with "The Elements of Computing Systems" or "Digital Design and Computer Architecture" to get the digital logic and processor architecture background.

If you just want to assemble an 8-bit computer from parts, then, as other posters have suggested, go with Ben Eater's tutorials and kits.


👤 chrisp_how
I learned how to do this in college: courses are Electronics 1 and 2, and Digital Logic, which ended in building an Arithmetic Logic Unit on the computer in software then uploading it to an FPGA, this one which cost $10.

Textbooks for these subjects can teach you. Also, you don’t need all that difficulty: 1) practice passing data from A to B. This is after learning some electricity, but you just want to catch some input, stop acting, then replay it: switch, to charge a capacitor-and-resistor, that unloads on an led after a few seconds. This is the entire principle of a computer, in a single action! I’m also sending Magical Help, since I’m an Angel. Take care!


👤 ajdecon
“The Elements of Computing Systems”, by Nisan and Schocken, starts at logic gates and works up to a functional computer that can play Tetris. So not quite Ohm’s Law, but close.

https://www.nand2tetris.org/book


👤 vhodges
Not books but:

https://eater.net/8bit/ (A series of videos) (Other Ben Eater subjects are good too).

https://nandgame.com/ (Virtual)


👤 teleforce
These are two excellent books that cover electrical, electronics and computer by an ex-Google engineer Ed Lipiansky:

[1]Electrical, Electronics, and Digital Hardware Essentials for Scientists and Engineers

[2]Embedded Systems Hardware for Software Engineers


👤 jonjacky
Charles Petzold's book Code.

👤 pwg
Another suggestion:

Computer Organization

By V. Carl Hamacher, Zvonko G. Vranesic and Safwat G. Zaky

Published by McGraw-Hill

I typed that in from the cover of the Second Edition, but that edition has a copyright date of 1984, so there are probably newer editions available given that this copy is now 38 years old.

Also:

Digital Logic and Computer Design

By M. Morris Mano

Unfortunately I don't have my copy of this one handy to find the publisher


👤 bradwood
Look up Ben Eater on YouTube. He pretty much covers all of this in his series on building a breadboard computer

👤 clusmore
Not quite all of what you're after but you might enjoy But How Do It Know?, which can fairly easily be found in PDF form if you do a Google search.