Spring 2004 CSCI 311 / ENGR 212 / ECE 212 Syllabus

Lectures

The course instructor is Dean Brock. The course lectures will be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:45 PM in Ramsey 011. Lectures will be recorded and stored on servers located at both NCSU and UNCA for student review. You will need to use your NCSU account to access the NCSU ECE 212 video archive. The UNCA copy of the lectures can be accessed through the ENGR/ECE 212 lecture page. When accessing the lectures from the UNCA campus, be sure to use the UNCA copy.

UNCA and NCSU

For UNCA students this course is taught as both CSCI 311 and ENGR 212. For NCSU students this course is taught as ECE 212 with sections 602, for students at UNC-Asheville; 603, for students at Lenior Community College; and 604, for students at UNC-Wilmington. Students in the NCSU/UNCA 2+2 and Mechatronics courses will be registered in both UNCA ENGR 212 and NCSU ECE 212.

This course is being taught in two NCSU on-campus sections, 001 and 002. The on-campus NCSU sections have identical homework assignments, lecture topics, textbook coverage, and grading policies. The Asheville section will confirm to the Raleigh setions as much as possible. In fact, most of the following sections of this syllabus were copied verbatim from the syllabi for the Raleigh sections.

The most significant course prerequisite is an introductory computer organization course using Patt and Patel's Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond as a text. At UNCA this is CSCI 255; at NCSU, it's ECE 206. If you are unsure about your preparation, please talk with the course instructor.

Class home page

All class handouts, including homework assignments, can be found through the following URL:

Goals

This course covers the fundamentals of hardware design for digital systems. The goal is to cover the fundamentals of logic design, including:

You will be introduced to the fundamentals of logic design through a combination of lectures, conventional homework assignments, and "electronic" homework assignments.

Textbook

The textbook for the course will be Digital Design Principles and Practices written by John F. Wakerly and published by Prentice-Hall (ISBN 0-13-089896-1 or 0-13-176059-9).

Course Requirements

Examinations

There will be two 75-minute in-class exams and a comprehensive final exam. No make-up exams will be given. If you have a conflict with a scheduled exam, you must notify the instructor in advance to arrange an alternative. Likewise, if you are unable to take an exam due to illness or emergency, you must notify this instructor immediately. Failure to notify prior to the exam time will result in a test grade of zero.

Homework

Assignments will be issued about once a week and due one week from the date of assignment. Though collaboration is sanctioned, direct copying is not. Realize that mastery of the material in the homework assignments will be essential for good performance in the exams. You may view the homework assignments and solutions, when posted, on the ENGR 212 homework index.

In general, homework solutions will be posted within a few hours of the homework due time. Homework assignments are due at the end of the class period. There will be a 20-point deduction for homework turned in after the end of the class period but on the due date. There will be a 50-point deduction for homework turned in after the due date.

Electronic Homework

Electronic homework assignments are laboratory assignments you implement on your own at home. This will involve designing and building combinational and sequential logic circuits on a breadboard or designing combinational and sequential circuits using ABEL or VHDL. There are three electronic homework assignments. The electronic homework assignments of students in Asheville or distant locations may differ from those of the other Raleigh-based NCSU ECE 212 sections to take account of our different lab facilities.

Grading Policy

Your grade will be based upon:

Two semester exams 40%
Final exam 30%
Homework 20%
Electronic homework 10%

The +/- system of grades will be used for this course.

Academic Integrity

All the provisions of the NCSU code of academic integrity apply to students enrolled in this course as NCSU ECE 212. Your signature on any test or assignment means that you neither gave nor received unauthorized aid.

For more information

The best way to get in touch with me is to send email to brock@cs.unca.edu. If you need to see me, send me email to arrange an appointment.