[alted]

Lower-level teaching resources definitely exist! Here are my favorites:

- The Zero to ASIC course (and Tiny Tapeout) [1] explains transistor circuits and teaches you an open source software stack---and you get a chip physically manufactured! You could make the Nand to Tetris computer in actual silicon (if you can get enough transistors).

- To learn how things are manufactured on silicon wafers, get textbooks on microfabrication. A decent starting point is [2]. There's also a good video series [3] for a quick overview.

- To understand how a single transistor or diode works, get textbooks on "semiconductor devices". A good starting point is the free online [4].

[1] https://www.zerotoasiccourse.com/ https://tinytapeout.com/

[2] "Introduction to Microelectronic Fabrication" by Jaeger

[3] https://siliconrun.com/our-films/silicon-run-1/

[4] "Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits" by Chenming Hu, https://www.chu.berkeley.edu/modern-semiconductor-devices-fo...

[MichaelZuo]

Thanks for the links, but notably there's a large gap between 'a single transistor or diode' and even the simplest real world microchip, such as the SN7400.

Everything before that stage, down to mining ore out of the ground, is understandable.

And everything after that stage is also understandable, at least to the level of an Intel 386 processor.

The gap is what I believe there are no resources online.