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.

In my two-hour Interfaced Computer Systems class for the week we finished their first experiment, the one where they were supposed to connect the parallel port to light emitting diodes and see the lights change as they varied the input on the keyboard.

Since there were only three groups and two hundred fifty six possible combinations for the eight LED indicators, I divided it evenly into eighty-five numbers per group to try out.

After a while it turned out that the lights would only change on the second time that they entered the new values.

I asked them to verify the outputs by getting the binary equivalents of the numbers they entered, and, after handing them a new electronic handout that explains how a ready signal has to be received by the computer from the port before it will send fresh values into the bus, asked them to find a possible reason why they have to enter the command in the program twice before the lights would change.

At least now they know that the port works, their circuit construction works, and the software (which eventually they are going to have to make one on their own anyway) works.

I also had to clear something up with them because they thought this was the lecture class and they left their lab notebook at home. We have one two-hour session and one three-hour session, both of which are now located in the robotics lab.

Sometimes in the lecture class it is more convenient for me to point out what we are doing or going to be doing in the lab while in the proximity of an actual working computer.

But since the students are the same in both classes anyway, as well as the groupings in the lab being flexible, I have thought that it would be more convenient if I switch from lecture to lab mode as soon as there is a complete concept that I want them to practice immediately, or vice versa.

They just have to be ready for those sudden turnovers.

I also had to clear up the schedule with the faculty attendance checker because she thought the robotics lecture class the engineering junior students had before that was an hour and a half when in fact it is only an hour because it is only a two-unit course for this term. So their teacher in that subject (and some of the other students) left after an hour and I took over.

Session 777 gets successfully transmitted through the port at this point. Class dismissed.