Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
DanBC · 2011-10-22
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I love stuff like this. I really hope keen engineering youth are able to get involved with building toy CPUs. Maybe not that complex, but enough to grasp what memory mapping and registers actually are.
Anyone interested could read either: (http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa...) {the intro is too gentle for too long, then bamm it's too hard for many people.}
(http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Student-Manual/dp/0521...) the student lab manual for the art of electronics. Probably best with AoE, which is showing its age but still excellent.
If asked, I tend to direct people towards the following books:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Electronics-Student-Manual/dp/...
Note: you need both the student manual (which most people don't know exists) and The Art Of Electronics.
To cover the maths background required, I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-Gullberg...
They are not cheap but worth it.
Oh and a calculator. Any old cheap scientific (Casio/TI/HP) will do as long as it doesn't make errors.
The big problem for me was the maths initially. It doesn't take long before you hit a brick wall at the age of 12. My 10 year old daughter is learning algebra and programming (in python!) though at school so things are looking up.