Mini and Microcomputer Systems

This volume is intended as an introduction to the hardware and software aspects of computers and computer systems. It should appeal primarily to first-year undergraduate or diploma students of electrical engineering, electronics and computing; it will also be of value to students of physics and other engineering disciplines. After a brief introduction to the historical background of computers, the main principles of the digital computer are discussed. The following chapters describe how numerical and non-numerical information is represented, the basic "building blocks" used in logic systems, and the hardware and machine-level programming of a minimal 8-bit serial computer. Practical machine architectures and the storage of digital information are then discussed. Software and microprocessor-based systems are the subjects of the next two chapters. This is followed by a chapter on microprocessor-based architectures. The final chapter provides an introduction to the important subject area of software engineering.