JoeN:
retrolefty:
I started studying digital ICs around 1971 with his earlier RTL cookbook and it really gave me a good foundation to grow on.
LeftyI just found a cheap old copy of this book on Amazon which I have bought. I am going to read or at least thoroughly scan it to see how things were done before TTL. I can only imagine. No wonder only the government and large companies could utilize computers prior to the microcomputer revolution (well, minicomputers for smaller businesses.)
Yes, minicomputers were what I was working on as a field service engineer in the 70s. Even then they were using the 7400 series of ICs. However what was best about the RTL cookbook was that because there were only the very basic digital function available in that series, such as simple gates and flip-flops, Don showed how these basic functions would be wired together to make higher order functions like shift registers, counters, adders, multiplexers, etc. If one first started out with a TTL primer which already had MSI IC functions like registers and counters reduced to single devices, one might not quite understand how the very basic functions could be used to build the more complex higher order functions. I did run across some real equipment later working in a oil refinery that did use RTL and DTL devices which were utilized before the almost universal jump to TTL that the industry took.
Lefty