Hw5

Hw5

Homework 5

Circuits City!

Homework 5 Problems

The problems for Thursday are the reading and lab (circuit-design problem). Problem 3 is good practice with the minterm expansion principle. Problem 4 is fun and rather amazing!

To check correctness of your circuits, you may want to use a calculator that can manipulate binary numbers. Windows, MacOS and Linux all come with a standard calculator application. Run the application, select View->Programming and then switch to binary mode (“Bin”). Click on 0 or 1 to enter number then switch to decimal mode (“Dec”).

We list some of the common issues that students face in this set of work. The description here might not make much sense yet before working on the circuits, but you can refer to these points later as you work through the circuits.

1. We often see wires in different colors. The dark and light green wires are the good ones. If you see a blue wire, that probably means you have not connected to the source (input) yet; if you see a red (dark red?) or other colorful wire, that probably means there is an error in connecting the wires, e.g., the wires are crossed (connected) where it shouldn’t be, or the wire didn’t connect properly to the circuits. You can try to use the pointer tool (the arrow) to pull the circuit around to find the disconnected wires.

2. Another common issue is that the circuits are not put in with proper “facing.” In this case the wire appears to have touched the pin, but it actually does not connect to the pin. This will also result in the wire not in green, thus an error. In this case, check the “facing” feature of the pin by using the pointer tool (the arrow) to click the pin, a table of features for the pin should show up at lower left corner. You can edit the features such as “facing” and the label. Make sure the wire that comes into the pin faces the proper side of the pin. For example, if a wire comes from right to left to the pin, then the pin should face “east.” If a wire comes from bottom up to the pin, then the pin should face “south.”

Before submitting your circuit files, please add your name and your partner’s name in each of the circuit as a comment, using the text tool.

Back to the CSCI 203 home page.