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Inside the Chip
Surveys the various types of integrated circuits and examines their uses
Paperback
First published July 15, 1983
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April 25, 2020
All About the Microchip
23 April 2020
These Usborne books are certainly getting rather interesting, and complex as well. In fact, I just visited their website where I discovered that they have released some more of the books from the 80s to download, and there certainly does seem to be some interesting ones there (including one on creating your own robots). Anyway, this book, as you probably have already worked out, is about the microchip, and we are certainly starting to get into some rather complex things here.
A lot of the things that are mentioned here we once again touched on in first-year computer science, and of course while the computers have become more powerful, and faster, and the components becoming much smaller, many of the concepts are still pretty much the same. Okay, let’s ignore quantum computing for a sec and consider that computers still operate on signals of 0s and 1s (or on and off). Of course, I wondered why computers had to work on binary, but apparently, they experimented with other concepts and it really didn’t work – binary does, and they simply ran with it.
However, I do find it rather fascinating how electronic circuits that simply operate on 0s and 1s can actually produce what computer enables us to do these days. Then again, as you work your way down the layers of abstraction it really does begin to make sense. For instance, computers count using binary, which consists of 0s and 1s. We count using the decimal system, but the thing is that you can easily convert a decimal number to binary using a simple mathematical formula. As for what appears on the screen, it is basically a bunch of cells, when turned on or off, produce the text you see on your computer screen. Colours operate simply by giving each of the colours a number, and that number is sent to the computer to produce a coloured light on your screen.
The interesting thing is that it all comes down to a bunch of logic known as Boolean algebra and logic gates. I won’t go into detail on what they happen to be, but Wikipedia not surprisingly has an article on it, and there are also a number of tutorial sites as well that explain the concept. What I found interesting is that this book actually covers the concepts as well, and does it in a way that a child can understand. What I thought was even better was that they not only showed you how to create one using electronic components, but they also gave instructions on the basics of building electronic circuits. Mind you, I don’t remember ever seeing any books that they released that focused entirely upon electronics.
Okay, this book is definitely quite dated these days, but it is still quite interesting, and rather fun as well. Mind you, it certainly won’t substitute for a textbook for university, though as I mentioned, while the book itself is old, the concepts really haven’t changed all that much, as much of what it says is still true today as it was back when it was first released (though I’m sure many of you don’t know what a daisy wheel printer is).
23 April 2020
These Usborne books are certainly getting rather interesting, and complex as well. In fact, I just visited their website where I discovered that they have released some more of the books from the 80s to download, and there certainly does seem to be some interesting ones there (including one on creating your own robots). Anyway, this book, as you probably have already worked out, is about the microchip, and we are certainly starting to get into some rather complex things here.
A lot of the things that are mentioned here we once again touched on in first-year computer science, and of course while the computers have become more powerful, and faster, and the components becoming much smaller, many of the concepts are still pretty much the same. Okay, let’s ignore quantum computing for a sec and consider that computers still operate on signals of 0s and 1s (or on and off). Of course, I wondered why computers had to work on binary, but apparently, they experimented with other concepts and it really didn’t work – binary does, and they simply ran with it.
However, I do find it rather fascinating how electronic circuits that simply operate on 0s and 1s can actually produce what computer enables us to do these days. Then again, as you work your way down the layers of abstraction it really does begin to make sense. For instance, computers count using binary, which consists of 0s and 1s. We count using the decimal system, but the thing is that you can easily convert a decimal number to binary using a simple mathematical formula. As for what appears on the screen, it is basically a bunch of cells, when turned on or off, produce the text you see on your computer screen. Colours operate simply by giving each of the colours a number, and that number is sent to the computer to produce a coloured light on your screen.
The interesting thing is that it all comes down to a bunch of logic known as Boolean algebra and logic gates. I won’t go into detail on what they happen to be, but Wikipedia not surprisingly has an article on it, and there are also a number of tutorial sites as well that explain the concept. What I found interesting is that this book actually covers the concepts as well, and does it in a way that a child can understand. What I thought was even better was that they not only showed you how to create one using electronic components, but they also gave instructions on the basics of building electronic circuits. Mind you, I don’t remember ever seeing any books that they released that focused entirely upon electronics.
Okay, this book is definitely quite dated these days, but it is still quite interesting, and rather fun as well. Mind you, it certainly won’t substitute for a textbook for university, though as I mentioned, while the book itself is old, the concepts really haven’t changed all that much, as much of what it says is still true today as it was back when it was first released (though I’m sure many of you don’t know what a daisy wheel printer is).
Displaying 1 of 1 review