Microcoder

The microcode word is 60 bits long, the microcode blasted into a ROM chip that plugs into a graphic controller circuit board for a 1980s computer workstation. Each word of microcode tells six or eight functional components on the board what to do, & each time a microcode word is read, those six or eight components do what they’re told — move data, increment or add or shift, change the state of one bit or another — the effect is visual, either the expected pattern appears on a computer monitor or it doesn’t. Sometimes nothing appears, sometimes the pattern is the wrong one, occasionally the screen jitters or flashes in a way that promises an epileptic fit for the sensitive viewer. Any mistake I make in coding means the newly blasted ROM is trash, means I return to the code & find the problem. I become a parallel processing machine — six or eight things happening at once, one word after another — I simulate microcode in my dreams.