by Christopher Mims, Technology Review
Want to know how the 6502 CPU, the heart and soul of the beloved Commodore 64, Atari 2600, Apple II and even Nintendo Entertainment System actually worked? Too bad. After 30 years, even the guys who designed this chip don’t remember how it works. All that’s left are some sketchy paper schematics, and they’re not terribly helpful. But a new field, “digital archaeology” rides to the rescue. Rather than pick and trowel, its tools are successive acid baths, which strip away one layer after another of a chip, revealing the guts of the microprocessors that launched the personal computing revolution.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27013/?p1=blogs
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