Binary Coding

[Dhej]

Tekro,

I am in a class where we have to design our on "computer", basically it is programing at the electical level, 1 is high voltage, 0 is low voltage. From there you have to use logic gates (NAND, AND, OR, XOR, blah,blah) and all sort of other integrated circuits (we actually had to make a NAND gate out of transistors, it took up all of our bread board, makes you realy glad that there are integrated cirtcuits.

Right now in the class, we have to design how our groups are going to make our computers, 3 people in each group, each group has their own design. At this basic level you have "hardcode" the controls into the computer, basically like the signals that the program sends to manipualtedata.

say1000000 was Move D, then you would have to figure out a way to make it so that every time that signal was sent it would move D.

The class at my college is called Digital Electronics, but at most Universities it is a part of the Electric Engineering major.

You want to know anything else, I'll tell you what I know, that is all I can do,

dhej

[TeKRoMaNCeR]

Dhej, thanks for the info.. one other question then... how do you build your circuits? Or.... are they pre-made 4 u? Thanks again.. everyone..

[Dhej]

We are building everything on breadboards, but a pro would use a circuit making program and a device that would etch a circuit board. Snce we are building basically an over--glorified calculator (we are basicall replaying the history of how computers evolved into PCs, except we are only uusing an Arithmatic Logic Unit, and not a MicroProcessor).

Our task is to design and build a "computer" that stores the numbers 2,3,4, and 5 in RAM, and then adds themtogether to get 14. Seems easy, but the ALU can only add two numbers at a time, so we have to build in a looping capability, our "Programing Language" is incredibly basic, we have simple commands that are 8bit binary numbers, to distinguish from our data we are making all the commands be in the form 1000 0xxx, where the xxx represents one of our 8 commands. Then we have to devise a circuit that will interpret these commands and make them happen.
An example would be like 1000 0001 being Move to TDSA.
This would take what is stored in an address in RAM and move it to a D-Latch called Temporary Data Storage A. 1000 0001 is all the "computer" sees, and it know that is has to move the data stored in the adress in RAM that something is being looked at to TDSA.

Our grade in the class is dependant on if our computer works. A if it does everthing it is supposed to, B if it is built and parts of it work, but 14 doesn't come out, C if it is built but doesn't work at all, D if it is parrtially built, and F if nothing gets done. The prof has informed us that there has been only a 25% success rate in the class. Only 25% of the people that take the class manage to get there computer computing. It is harder than it sounds, particularly if you aren't taking it at a school that has an EE major. Basically how we have been learning is he gave us the spec shets for the chips we are using, and then we had to figure out how to make the work for certain tasks, and now we have to put them all together into a device that has to work if we want an A.

But, it is a great class, it really makes you think about all the engineering that is involved in building the latest computers.

Think of thise, one NAND gate built on a breadbord with only transistors and diodes takes up the whole breadboard, but in a modern processor there are over a million NAND gates, and NAND gates are the simplest to build XOR, and OR gates are crazy.

Ok, I babble.

dhej

[Stronzo]

Don't you just love circuit design Dhej?

[SARCASM]I know I do.[/SARCASM]

[Dhej]

Originally posted by Stronzo
Don't you just love circuit design Dhej?

[SARCASM]I know I do.[/SARCASM]

It is my favorite thing in the world.
Makes me glad that I am a Philosophy Major.
(Its sad when your hobby is more likely to get you a job then what you go to school for.)

But then, when everything works the way you want it to it really is neat. It is so much more concrete than writing a program. Getting your output in binary from LEDs just has this feeling of being hardcore. Just like *nix -fiends mock people with GUIs, this makes me feel like I should mock people with command-lines. "Oh, you use a command-line, that is such a waste of RAM," lol. Also brings a new (or brings back the old) meaning for "build you own." Too bad it has less oomph than a typical calculator (and I am not even talking about scientific calculators either).

Though, I do have a feeling my brain is going to pop in about 2 weeks when we actually start building what we have designed.

dhej

[jackthekiller]

Hiya Dhej. Could you teach me how to do it?.

[daryl_frost]

As far as the computer is concerned all there is is Binary, no HEX, Decimal, octal, C, or even assembly code. Just Binary.
(All the transistors in your CPU are either ON or OFF as you know)

The first micro's to come out like the mini SC/MP had (from memory) two rows of 8 toggle switches.

One for the Address Bus and
the second row of 8 toggle switches for the data bus.

To program,
Set the ADDress toggle switches to the location of the memory you want to place an instruction or data.
Set the DATA toggles to the Binary data you want to enter
press the Write press button.

Output is two rows of 8 LEDS displaying the binary contents of
the ADDress and DATA busses.

Coding is done in assembly, converting the Mnemonics to HEX then the HEX to BINARY and coding into the micro.
Ahhh those were the days. (this is about 1977)

Regards
Frosty

[daryl_frost]

bye the way

I think the Mini SC/MP used a 4 bit microprocessor
it was basically a calculator chip, it was called the

Intel 4004 the predecesor to the 8008
then the 8080 -> 80186 -> 80286 ->>>>>> the rest is history.

[muggy]

Your awnser:

The BIOS system chip was designed purely on mathmatics. It is the main input/output controler in your system, as it's name inplies.

imagine this, your CPU was made of thousands of light switches and depending on which ones were flicked on, you could always generate a predictible mathmatical equasion based on that. When thinking about micro computer fundementals, you should remember that one game on the "Price is Right" where the player drops the token down the slanted pin board to land in a money spot, but think of this method as being predictable such as in computer design.

Before dos or any compiled language (where dos doesn't matter in your programming question) there was assemboly which is more the less "binary" in a form humans can understand. The assemboly language for the most part is nothing more than crap written in HEX, which is just a short hand form of binary.

read several books on assemboly and take several months to digest it, and then you'll understand half of nothing that I do. puters at the machine level are so damn complicated.... The only way to ever being able to understand is to purse it always, asking us will never make you understand...

To damn hard to explain, i'm going back to my beer sluggin' now....

[Stronzo]

Can't you just wait till atomic computers are economically viable?

I mean, who cares about current/no current (1/0) anymore? Try positive electron spin, negative electron spin, multiplied by X number of electrons 'in' the atom (I know it's not in but I couldn't phrase it a different way).

Just think of how fast your dictionary attack could work if you had a couple of helium atoms in your processor working for you...

Damn I love technology and innovation!