Chapter 7
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CS 103 Hardware
The Logic Machine
In this unit, we will take a quick look at the physical structure of your computer at the lowest
level - the switch. In the last chapter we said that the machine language instructions for a
particular microprocessor controlled the way electrons flowed through the circuitry of the computer
culminating in some desired result. Using applets designed by Decker & Hirshfield we will see how
to construct circuits that begin to do useful work by turning switches off and on (the 1s and 0s of our
binary machine language programs). Naturally, an actual computer is many thousands
of times more complex than our examples, but the concepts are sound.
Lesson 1 - The Switch
Lesson 2 - Gates
Lesson 3 - The Arithmetic Level
Lesson 4 - Storage & Control
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Objectives
- To describe how the circuits of a computer are constructed.
- To build and test a variety of circuits.
- To see how simple circuits, combined in complex ways, can implement a
model computer.
- To show the hierarchy of complexity of a computer; combining switches,
gates, and circuits to perform logical tasks.
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