leo.notenboom.org

Relic

Cleaning out a desk drawer I stumbled onto one of these:

Back in the day this was my pocket bible. Microsoft Cobol on the 8086 was in assembly language, and we counted clock cycles to squeeze every ounce out of the machine. I had most of 'em memorized.

Between processor complexity and teaching mostly only higher level programming languages, I expect most current programmers to never know what a clock cycle even is.

Processor Architecture:

Addressing and Instructions:

From valued tool to keepsake and reminder of a "simpler" time.