For a playing around project, I don't think anybody cares how ugly or not ugly the pictures are, as long as they are legible. They are only a tool to get the job done.


I think your C-as-documentation idea is still okay. At least for me, though, it would be impossible to work out all those details in C without some kind of high level picture to look at. [insert requisite "YMMV" here] But I think with a series of drawings that show generally what happens for various situations, the coding would be a lot easier.

First of all, you would have names for everything on the picture so you wouldn't have to remember them when coding. Second, in the process of making the pictures and highlighting the data paths used for each instruction and/or addressing mode, the similarities among them might become really obvious. Then finally, when it's time to actually implement the control logic, you would be able to just look at the pictures and say something like, "Okay, for this instruction I can see from my picture that I need to set mux A to position B, and I need to enable the path from the accumulator to the data bus, and ..." That part might be almost mechanical.

It's amazing how easy this sounds to someone who is not actually doing the work. :)

-- Russ