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 the meeting of my Integrated Computers Systems lab class for the sixth week of the second term, all the groups finally started working on the experiment slash project of the quiz contest or game show "first person among many to press the button gets to answer the question as indicated by the buzzer" circuit.

I gave the students the circuit for making a two-buzzer system complete with doorbell switches, and using an exclusive or gate and two D flip flops, which, after they have made to work, they will now have to expand to three, four and so on buzzers, until they reach twelve. Somewhere along the middle, they will have to start to use encoders, decoders and maybe seven segment displays and the converters.

There was even a third switch involved with their first circuit, that resets the value of the lights instead of having to turn off the power altogether, although that may not work as well as we had initially expected in the implementation.

And for some of the students it was the first time that they handled a logic probe to be able to troubleshoot their circuit, looking at each part and gate of the circuit if it was working or not.

First they had to determine if their switches were working. For one group, they had to replace one of those since even if was pressed or not, there was no signal going into the probe. Ultimately it was just a problem with their connection.

Second, knowing that their inputs were already working, they had to find out if the gate they used was working properly. Unfortunately, that was not the case when they tried to use the first three exclusive or gates in the chip, but the last one worked.

Personally I would have told them to switch chips if three out of the four gates in it is not working, looking at probability.

This was also when we had to disconnect the switch that is connected to the reset, which was also still connected to the output of the exclusive or gate, which of course explains why it changes value when the reset switch is pressed, making it look like it was connected to the inputs of the gate when it's not.

Session 1363 was only handling some equipment in the lab for the first time. Class dismissed.