Physics 234: Digital
Electronics
Fall 2008
Jed Brody
(N308, 7-5580, jbrody@emory.edu)
Logic is
the beginning of wisdom, not the end.
—Mr.
Spock
This course emphasizes hands-on experimentation with digital circuits. The objective is to become proficient in both the theory and practice of digital electronics.
The first part of the course introduces the basic building blocks of digital circuits: logic gates, flip-flops, and counters. The second part of the course introduces the microprocessor, arguably the most important device in the modern world. (Without the microprocessor, there would be no computers and therefore no internet, no modern medical instruments, no modern telecommunications, etc.) We will learn how to write programs in machine language (example: 86 21 8B 17 3E) and to interface the microprocessor with input and output devices.
Grades will be determined as follows:
Test (9/18): Combinational Logic 20%
Digital-logic project (due 10/16):
Lab manual 10%
Lab report 10%
Test (11/25): Microprocessor Programming 30%
Microprocessor project (due 12/17): 30%
Date Topic Activity
8/28 Diodes Digital experiment 3
9/2 Transistors Digital experiments 1, 4
9/4 Inverters Digital experiment 2
9/9 Boolean algebra Digital experiment 5
9/11 Minimum configurations Digital experiment 7
9/16 Wired-AND Digital experiment 8
9/18 Test: Combinational Logic
9/23 SR flip-flops Digital experiment 9
9/25 D and JK flip-flops Digital experiments 10, 11
9/30 Counters Digital experiment 12
10/2 Counter applications Digital experiments 13, 14
10/7 Decoders and displays Digital experiments 18, 19
10/9 Memory Digital experiment 23
10/16 Programming Programming experiment 3
10/21 Branching Programming experiment 5
10/23 Condition codes Programming experiment 6
10/28 Addressing modes Programming experiment 7
10/30 Subroutines Programming experiment 10
11/4 Memory interfacing Interfacing experiment 1
11/6 Interrupts Interfacing experiment 2
11/11 Address decoding Interfacing experiment 3
11/13 Data output Interfacing experiment 4
11/18 Data input Interfacing experiment 5
11/20 PIA Interfacing experiment 6
11/25 Test: Microprocessor Programming
12/2 Audio output Interfacing experiment 7
12/4 Parallel-to-serial conversion Interfacing experiment 8
12/9 ADC and DAC Interfacing experiment 9
All experiments are from Heathkit manuals, which should be available in the bookstore. The digital experiments are from the Digital Techniques Workbook, the programming experiments are from the Microprocessors Textbook, and the interfacing experiments are from the Microprocessors Workbook.