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Computer Electronics
The Computer Electronics class was learning the building blocks of making computer circuits. On the first day we learned how to set up a simple circuit by using switches, various computer chips, and LEDs. The circuit would give a "Yes" or "No" answer for a situation based on the resources available (you could change if it was present but flipping the switch for that resource).
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| Tyler was getting familiar with the circuit board (above) |
| Dominique and Taylor testing their circuit (right) |
Dr. Barrett taught us all about how computer circuits work. He explained that all chips have the same basic parts that they used back in the 70's. New chips are just smaller and packaged together for certain tasks instead of using many chips for a common process.
Dr. Barrett looks over the building of our first computer
circuit. (Left)
After we learned how to make simple basic circuits we began to learn how to make more complex circuits. We kept building off of our first circuit by adding different computer chips. We were then able to have a voting machine that could be used by a company's board of directors. When a member would vote it would become weighted based on how many shares they had and would then light an LED if there were enough votes for the motion to pass.
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| Dominique and Taylor looking at what wires to connect. | Tyler carefully adding a part to his circuit board. |
Colby and Jay were in a state of confusion while trying to debug their circuit board. (Right)
We soon learned that a very simple circuit could become very complicated. Lucky for us Dr. Barrett taught us different ways to simplify circuits. We used Karnaugh maps (K-maps) to simplify them. You would have to make a truth table for the inputs and then make the map. You would then group adjacent 1's together in groups of 1, 2, 4, or 8 by making the group as big a possible and the least number of group possible.
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| Jay, Tyler, Dominique, and Taylor hard at work making a digital counting device. |
By the end of the week we were becoming quite good at making computer circuits. Our final day we made a circuit that had a digital counter. We could make it count faster, slower, forward, or backwards.