Warp wrote:
>   Do you really need to know how a vacuum tube works in order to know how
> a modern computer works?

Well, at the time, TVs still ran on vacuum tubes. I guess with the death of 
CRTs, only people running medical equipment care about how they work now. 
But that's why it was a 1200-page tome. It went all the way from vacuum 
tubes to TTL and CMOS circuits. You could probably drop the first half of 
the book and it would still work.

You didn't have to know it, but it might be a little easier to understand 
semiconductor transistors if you can make an analogy to vacuum tubes, perhaps.

>   I'm sure there are in-between books as well.

College text books, I guess, sure. They're just not common. Do a search on 
"computer hardware textbook" and you get "how to use Windows 7" and 
"Understaning Access" as the first hits. :-)

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Computer-Hardware-Alan-Clements/dp/0199273138/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1

I mean, look at the TOC of this, the first book on amazon for the search of 
"computer hardware textbook". Nothing in the TOC obviously about the 
semiconductor level. Gates, yes, bits, yes. 100 pages talking about gates, 
zero talking about semiconductors.

The "computer architecture" goes from page 205 to 209, followed by 50 pages 
about the instruction set. Nothing actually gets all the way down to the 
*hardware*. From what I can tell of the TOC, nothing there tells you how 
many pins a transistor has, for example.  As I go on, I see chapter 7 looks 
like it might address some of the same stuff the SAM's book I referred to 
addressed. But still no hardware. Actually, other than that, it looks like a 
really good textbook. :-)

That said, *this* one sounds pretty good, but without looking into it it's 
hard to say:

http://www.amazon.com/Semiconductor-Devices-How-They-Work/dp/041258770X/ref=sr_1_1

I guess everything just got complexer, to the point where it doesn't make 
sense to put it all in one book.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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