Instructor Notes

January 28, 2008

quote

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949

review

• binary, decimal, hexadecimal
• bit, nibble, byte, word
• unsigned, signed: 2s complement
• bit shifts and rotates

Z80 assembly applied intro

• von Neumann architecture (also called stored-program)
  • compare with Harvard architecture

• Z80 family tree: 8008 --> 8080 --> Z80

• registers (Z80 user's guide page A1-3)

• Fetch, execute: fetch data, PC <= PC + 1, decode, repeat

• telling the CPU what to do

• what is assembler?

  011111101111111011100100
  ---
  01111110 11111110 11100100
  ---
  01111110
  11111110 11100100
  ---
  7E
  FE E4
  ---
  LD A,[HL]
  CP $E4 

  • format of assembler code, before and after assembly (label, opcode, operands)
• Register's details: (A1-3 of Z80 user's guide)
  • Accumulator
  • HL: the 16-bit accumulator, sort-of
  • DE, BC
  • the flag register (chap 5 Z80 user's guide)
• simple instructions
  • LD, CP, JP, JR, call
  • the meaning of []
• addressing modes

special commands for the assembler

• include
• section "name",HOME[location]
• db

blog

• log into BlackBoard and check FirstnameLastname stuff

• example of posting on blog
• assignment: make a "home page" on the blog for Monday.

discussion list

• make sure everybody has the email addy they want

IDE

download and install

• editor
• assembler
• emulator
• "hello world" test program

for another class

• instruction types
• addressing modes (TRS-80 book page 41 chap 3)

• GameBoy applied intro