Hi all! I was wondering whether anyone would like to share their favourite books or other learning resources (videos, websites, magazines, etc.) for learning how to build logic circuits.

Over the past few months, I've managed to make a lot of progress building increasingly complex circuits, but I've mostly taken a paint-by-numbers approach, iterating my way towards solutions experimentally (and with a lot of help from you all!) without a really solid basis for each design.

Most recently, I tried my hand at Verilog using a CPLD and found it much easier to build something pretty complex, likely because it's much similar to the software development process that I'm used to. However, it still feels like a crutch and I would like to up my game with discrete logic—hence my request for some learning resources.

TIA!

I am still a relative tyro, but I am making progress! I started out a year or so with From Nand 2 Tetris. In part one, beginning with NAND gates as your basic building blocks, you design (in a simplified HDL) and implement (in a simulator) a simple 8-bit Harvard architecture machine. I stopped at the end of the hardware section, but the book does continue on with a software section where you write a little OS and, in fact, Tetris! There's also a textbook version of the course called "The Elements of Computing Systems."

I went on to find a copy of "Digital Computer Electronics" by Albert Paul Malvino. This is the book Ben Eater recommends in his youtube video series. It took me a while to land an affordable copy - used ones tend to be prohibitively expensive. There is a PDF version floating around out there, and the lower production quality "International Version" can usually be found in paperback for $30 - $40.

DCE is a really cool book, but I felt like I didn't remember enough of the basics of electrical circuits from 30 years ago when I studied them in 4H club, so I got a copy of the classic "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill to review and patch up any holes in my knowledge. The first half of this book concerns analogue circuits, so you can double down on your capacitor model and become a master of voltage dividers! The second half is about digital logic; I have read that that section isn't as good as the first part, but my kung fu is not advanced enough to have an opinion.

One book I don't have but that I would like to add to my library is "Introduction to VLSI Systems," by Carver Mead. This is a classic work about chip design that, as I understand it, altered the unfolding of computing progress. It also tends to be expensive to find a used copy, so I haven't nabbed one yet.

If you want to design systems, rather than logic devices, there's a book called Microprocessor Interfacing Techniques by the prolific Rodnay Zaks. It has a lot of practical examples using a variety of microprocessors (8085, 6800, Z80) that help demystify things like address decoding. The systems described are at about the same level of complexity as the KIM-1.

http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/6502-books/ has really nice scans of some of these vintage and hard to find books. I have a couple of years of reading material queued up from my last visit there.

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"The key is not to let the hardware sense any fear." - Radical Brad

The Art of Electronics was my first and main introduction, I think, aside from various projects described in electronics magazines.

Mead & Conway is available online at Lynn Conway's site.

Both favourite books - I still have my copies.

Thanks for all the great advice! It looks like I have some reading to do