A number of readers of this Blog and the World Of Spectrum Forums have expressed an interest in the material being made available in the form of a book instead of purely on-line material. To this end, I have turned my downloadable mini-book proposal into a more complete and professional book that will be available from your local book store, Amazon etc as well as from this website. Retail price will be £24.95, is expected to be between 250 and 300 pages and will be published by ZXDesign and Media. Date of publication will be early August 2010.
Further book release information and pre-ordering is available here.
"The ZX Spectrum ULA: How to design a microcomputer" is pitched to be readable by the novice, but quickly moves into more complicated territory, and would be readable by anyone with a general interest who can follow boolean logic, the electronics hobbyist, the electronic engineering student, retro-hardware fan or just a piece of shelf-candy for the Sinclair enthusiast. It gives a thorough discussion of Ferranti, their ULA and a detailed examination of every functional unit of the Sinclair design. It introduces each idea from the ground up and tries not to make the assumption that the reader has read the particular subject matter before. However it does not dwell on the basics, as there are plenty of texts available that can develop those areas further. If anything, it should be far more readable than this Blog.
The technical details of the 6C001E ULA will of course be made available through this website in keeping with the philosophy of being part of the community, but the book will offer the most comprehensive write up and will be completed first.
I've put together a selection of six pages from the book so far, downloadable from here. It is just a taster, a handfull of pages from an early draft.
Edit: 29/12/2008 - Clarified expected price of book.
Edit: 30/04/2009 - Update completion estimate to be over the summer.
Edit: 25/06/2009 - Added link to example PDF.
Edit: 14/04/2010 - Updated price, target date and availability.