Week Five Notes

Announcements

• I am handing back the Glossary assignments - grades are on the last page. The latest grade sheet has been posted. (( Note: Headers and Footers are not supposed to be double-spaced. This is true of the article review assignments too.))
• The first quiz will be given on Wednesday, Oct 04 - in class - covering chapters 10, 0 and 1, plus ethics.
• The first article review will be due on Monday, October 09.
• Is anybody having difficulty with the assignment?
• We are doing 'self-service' roll call today. Please mark the appropriate box with an 'X'. Please tell me if your name is missing from the sheet.
• We are reading chapter two and three this week.
• I will probably have to be away on October 18, 20, and 23 for jury duty. Someone will substitute for me on 10/18 and 10/20. I don't know about 10/23 yet.

Chapter Two -- Hardware Basics - Inside the Box

• Thomas Watson -- IBM
• Ignore directions in the book to bypass material
• Much of computer hardware is implemented with binary switching systems - explain the basic functionality of transistors.
  • This URL: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/trancirc.htm has a diagrams of Resistor-Transistor versions of a NOT gate.
  • This URL: http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~jones/es154/lectures/lecture_7/lecture_7.html has diagrams of Resistor-Transistor versions of NOR and NAND gates.
  • The NOR gate outputs "1" only if both inputs are "0" (If you invert the output you get an OR-gate, whose output is "0" only when both inputs are "0"
  • The NAND gate outputs "0" only if both inputs are "1" (If you invert the output you get an AND-gate, whose output is "1" only when both inputs are "1"
  • There is a diagram of common logic gates here: http://www.siliconfareast.com/logicgates.jpg
  • There are diagrams of half- and full-adders here: http://www.play-hookey.com/digital/adder.html
  • Some other diagrams and explanations are available here: http://www.play-hookey.com/digital/d_nor_flip-flop.html
  • Computers have RAM primary memory - works as an array of individually addressable words.
  • Do we have a junk computer to show to class and point out functional units?
• Binary representation of information - binary arithmetic - binary numbers - binary character codes - examples of ASCII codes on page 79.
• When we use our word processor, what is happening with the RAM, Disk Drive, and CPU?

Chapter Three -- Hardware Basics - Peripherals

• OCR technology
• Discuss the difference between analog and digital images and videos.