R8 Programmer's Manual
R8 Programmer's Manual
The definitive technical reference for the R8 CPU architecture.
Who is this book for?
Everyone interested in the R8 CPU architecture, especially those writing emulators or tooling for the system, and R8 assembly-language programmers.
What’s special about it?
The R8 Programmer’s Manual is the definitive technical reference for the R8, a fantasy retro fan-fiction CPU. This charming machine hails from an alternative 1976, when men were men and women were women (though you couldn’t always tell because of the long hair), and computers were things you either glimpsed in a futuristic white machine room or painstakingly soldered together on your kitchen table.
The R8 is a realistic 8/16-bit CPU with many family resemblances to historical chips like the Zilog Z80, MOS 6502, Intel 8080, and Motorola 68000. Its architecture is very similar to contemporary CPUs, and its simple, highly regular instruction set will be immediately familiar to any assembly-language programmer.
This manual contains the complete technical specification for the chip, including registers, flags, instruction set, cycle timing, and assembly language syntax. All the information you need to implement an R8 emulator, assembler, or compiler is included.
From a long-ago golden age of truly personal computing, the R8 Programmer’s Manual is a time capsule of 1970s graphic design and typesetting. It’s also the perfect way to put the fun back into programming.
What will I learn?
- Technical overview: the R8 architecture is explained in loving detail.
- Instruction set: all R8 opcodes and instruction formats are comprehensively documented, with assembly-language examples.
- Assembly-language programming: a complete manual for the R8ASM assembler, its syntax and directives, including instructions for assembling programs from paper tape.
This is one of the course books for my Mastery mentoring, in which the R8 architecture plays an important teaching role, giving students a strong foundation in computer systems engineering and digital design.
What do I get?
- PDF and ePub included
- Works on computers, tablets, phones, and ebook readers
- Free lifetime updates
What do readers say?
Sebastián Tomás Alvarez, Senior Software Engineer, Heard
“Clear, detailed, and comprehensive.”
This is essential reading for anyone working with the R8 architecture. Every detail of the machine is spelled out; exactly what emulator writers need.
