Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

On the fifth day of classes for the second term I had my first lecture session for the Interfacing Computer Systems lecture class.

First of all I had it moved to the robotics lab because I wanted to show them the ports on the back of the computer. When the new faculty attendance checker asked if the move would be permanent (something that already was brought up when I called her office earlier to effect the change) I said that I will have to ask the associate dean when she is next in the campus.

Second, looking at the students’ schedules trying to figure out an earlier possible time for our class, I noticed that it was set for one hour twice a week instead of an hour and a half. I have completely forgotten that the lecture subject is just set for two units, and that we were going to get out – hooray – thirty minutes earlier than I expected.

But that wasn’t enough for me. Even though I used to have classes – laboratory at that – going up to 7pm, this really hasn’t recurred for more than a year now.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that overnights in the office have become something much, much less than at least once a week, in fact, down to three times in twenty-one months.

So the engineering junior students and I settled on a two hour session once a week starting at 8am. Hopefully the paper work from getting it noted by the associate dean to having it received by the registrar’s office will all be processed and accomplished before our next class.

Anyway, I talked about the rudiments of computer architecture, concentrating on the number of ones and zeros that chips inside the computer have to send and receive to be able to communicate in a distinct language.

That’s when I introduced the concept of computer buses, saying there were two kinds: local and external. Of course, we were to concentrate on the external buses, which is what interfacing with the computer is supposed to be all about.

I also started on the serial port, which is called such because the bits of data when transmitted from the bus one at a time, the synchronized pulses of the clock both chips are connected to saying how many high or low bits in a row are actually being sent.

Since the students’ background of computer architecture is spotty (they are taking assembly language programming at the same time as my subject, not before!) I had to stop there at that point, and continue next time.

Session 763 stops passing bits here. Class dismissed.