My office hours, phone number and e-mail address are available on my home page.

Primary Text

Structured Computer Organization, Third Edition, Andrew S. Tannenbaum, Prentice Hall, 1990.

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of how computers do what they do. In your CS courses up to this point you have been writing programs that control a computer. You have used these programs to get the computer to perform particular tasks. But how is the computer able to understand the language of your program? This is the fundamental question that we will answering this semster.

This course will cover the following topics:

• Transistors & Logic Gates
• Logical Design
  • Combinational Logic
  • Logic Simplification
  • Sequential Logic
• Number Representations
• Data Path Design
• Instruction Cycle
• Basic Bus Architecture
• Micro-Programmed Control Units
• Instruction Sets
• Assembly Language Programming
  • Basic Asm. Lang.
  • Implementation of High Level Language Constructs
• Interrupts
  • Bus Devices
  • Direct Memory Access
• Multi-programming and OS Support

The breakdown of grade assignment is as follows:

Homework	10%
Midterm Exam #1	20%
Take Home Midterm Exam #2	25%
Programming Assignments:	35%
Final Project:	10%

All homework assignments, labs and exams will be graded on an absolute scale. At the end of the semester a curve may be applied to the total absolute grades for the entire class to determine each individual's final grade.

Homework

Homework will be given periodically throughout the semester to give you practice with material from the readings or lectures. This homework may be given using the on-line assignment system.

Homework assignments will generally be graded with 4 points per problem. The scores for each problem will be given as follows:

4) Perfect answer.
3) Mostly right answer (i.e. Bad syntax, formatting or inefficient algorithm).
2) Sort of got the idea (i.e. Right approach wrong answer).
1) Made some effort (i.e. Wrong approach wrong answer).
0) No effort.

Any in class exams will be 50 min. long and will be open book and open notes.

Take Home Exams

Any take home exams are ABSOLUTELY individual assignments. If collaboration occurs on a take home exam all students involved in the collaboration will receive a 0% for that exam and the matter will be turned over to the Dean for disciplinary action. Besides, since I will be grading on a curve helping someone else get a better grade can only hurt your grade.

Take home exams will be open notes, open book, open computer etc... So basically you will be allowed to use anything except someone else's help. If you have questions on the exam you should talk only to me. Because these are open everything exams you can expect them to be more conceptual than factual. Some questions may even require you to write code or analyze given code segments.

Programming Assignments

The programming assignments are a major part of this course, as evidenced by the fact that they constitute a large portion of your course grade. All projects will be done in groups of 2. Your project groups must remain the same throughout the semester.

Grading for the projects will be divided between design and implementation. For each project you will turn in two items:

Design Document

Your design document will describe the design of your program and the testing procedures that you used to verify its correctness.

Implementation Code

This is the C++ code that you have written.

Projects will be graded according to the specifications in the Project Design and Code Evaluation document.

Late Work Policy

Absolutely no late work will be accepted without penalty!

However, since I am not a complete tyrant, I am implementing what I call the "NEET" late policy. NEET stands for "No Excuse Extension Time" and you can use it to extend any due dates you choose. The rules of NEET are as follows:

• Each of you will receive 2 days worth of NEET.
• NEET can be used only in full day chunks.
• So if your assignment is 1 hour late you just burnt one full day of NEET.
• NEET may be applied to (almost) any assignment.
  The only assignments that NEET may not be applied to are in class exams and any assignment due on the last day of finals week.
• Using NEET on a group deadline costs each member of the group the same amount of NEET.
  So if your project is a day late every member of your group looses 1 day of NEET. If a member of your group doesn't have any NEET left and the deadline is missed that member will suffer the penalty as described below.
• Use your NEET wisely.
  No other extensions will be granted without an act of your respective deity. I recommend saving them for emergency use.

Late work handed in after all your NEET has been used will be penalized 30% the first day and no credit will be given after the first day. Again any portion of a day counts as a full day. Any assignments handed in late must be given to me in person so that I may account for your NEET.

Attendance Policy

We are all adults and therefore class participation or attendance does not directly factor into your grade. However, much of what we discuss in class will be directly related to the exam questions and programming assignments. Therefore, it is in your best interest to attend and participate in class. If you miss class the assignments are posted on the Web. It is your responsibility to make sure you hand in all assignments on time.