These are the notes from an evening lecture course on Computer Organization and Programming which I gave at Hong Kong Polytechnic (now Hong Kong Polytechnic University) in 1984. Some of it, particularly the PDP-11 bias, will seen quaint now, and indeed the PDP-11 was on its way out even then. However, those who programmed it will appreciate how well-designed its instruction set was, unlike some computers I could mention.

The course is not complete: for some of the lectures, I relied on the notes of a fellow lecturer, with whom I have long since lost touch.

Lecture 1, containing:

• THE STORED PROGRAM CONCEPT
• COMPILERS AND INTERPRETERS
• OPERATING SYSTEMS
• TEXT EDITORS, LINKERS, AND DEBUGGERS
• ANALYSIS, DESIGN AND PROGRAMMING OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Lecture 2, containing:

• TRUTH TABLES FOR BOOLEAN OPERATIONS
• REWRITE RULES OF BOOLEAN ALGEBRA
• REPRESENTATION OF BOOLEAN OPERATIONS IN TERMS OF 'NAND' AND 'NOT'
• CONSTRUCTION OF LOGIC GATES
• THE HALF ADDER AND FULL ADDER

Lecture 3, containing:

• SUBTRACTION
• THE SR AND T FLIP-FLOPS
• THE JK MASTER SLAVE FLIP-FLOP
• SHIFT REGISTERS

Lecture 4, containing:

• PDP11 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE (MACRO 11)
• PDP-11 Memory organization
• MACRO-11 Instructions
• REGISTERS AND ADDRESSING MODES
• The Special-Purpose Registers
• Another Programming Example

Lecture 5, containing:

• REPRESENTATION AND STORAGE OF DATA
• Number Systems
• Representation of Non-numeric Data. Character Codes.
• Definition of Bytes, Words, Records and Blocks.

Lecture 6, containing:

• REPRESENTATION OF NEGATIVE NUMBERS
• SIGNED MAGNITUDE
• ONE'S COMPLEMENT
• TWO'S COMPLEMENT
• OVERFLOW DETECTION
• BINARY CODED DECIMAL
• SIMPLE INPUT/OUTPUT ON THE PDP-11

Lecture 7, containing:

• FLOATING POINT NUMBERS
• A REPRESENTATION FOR FLOATING POINT NUMBERS
• MULTIPLICTION AND DIVISION OF FLOATING POINT NUMBERS
• ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION OF FLOATING POINT NUMBERS
• FIXED POINT DECIMAL NUMBERS

Lecture 8, containing:

• FIXED POINT DECIMAL NUMBERS
• EXAMPLES OF BINARY FLOATING POINT CALCULATIONS

Lecture 9, containing:

• MACRO ASSEMBLY
• CONDITIONAL ASSEMBLY
• ITERATIVE ASSEMBLY

Lecture 10, containing:

• PARAMETER PASSING
• RECURSION
• REVERSE POLISH
• A SIMPLE SOFT MACHINE

Lecture 11, containing:

• SECONDARY STORAGE CHARACTERISTICS
• Random/Sequential Access
• Magnetic Tapes
• Magnetic Disks
• DRUM STORAGE
• CORE STORAGE

Lecture 12, containing:

• PRINCIPLES AND IMPLEMENTATION OF INSTRUCTION CODES
• Processor Architecture
• CPU Registers and Data Paths.
• Stack Manipulation and Subroutine Instructions

Lecture 13, containing:

• MAIN MEMORY ACCESS
• READ ONLY MEMORY

Lecture 14, containing:

• PDP-11 Addressing Modes and Instruction Formats
• Two Address Instruction Format
• Primitive Addressing Modes
• Non-primitive Addressing Modes
• One Address Instruction Format
• Byte and Word Instructions

Lecture 15, containing:

• Interrupts
• Use of Interrupts
• Real-time Systems
• Real-time Programming Techniques
• Interrupts on the PDP-11
• The Processor Status Word

Lecture 16, containing:

• Traps
• Concurrent Processes
• The Dispatcher
• Inter-process Communication and Semaphores
• Implementation of WAIT and SIGNAL

Lecture 17, containing:

Lecture 18, containing:

• BASIC
• PASCAL
• PROLOG
• IMPROVEMENTS WITHIN THE VON-NEUMANN FRAMEWORK
• Microcoded Instruction Set
• Pseudo-registers
• Instruction Pipelining
• Caching
• IMPROVEMENTS TO THE VON-NEUMANN ARCHITECTURE
• Array Processing
• Processor Pipelining

Copyright 1984, 1985 D. Fisk

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