Assignment 1, due Aug 29

Always, on every assignment, please write your name legibly as it appears on your University ID and on the class list! All assignments will be due at the start of class on the day indicated (usually a Friday). The only exceptions to this rule will be by advance arrangement unless there is what insurance companies call "an act of God" - something outside your control. Homework must be turned in on paper and in class! Late work may be turned in to the teaching assistant's mailbox, but see the late work policy. Never push late work under someone's door!

1. What is your E-mail address? (If you have more than one, give the address you'd prefer used for class purposes.)

   Real Homework!

2. Background: The ILLIAC II computer, designed in the 1950's and operational in 1962, had a 52-bit word, with instructions that were either 13 or 26 bits in length. the most interesting character set supported by any printing device in this era was that of the Flexowriter. This had 86 printable characters and 8 control codes. Included in the control codes were two codes for shifting back and forth between upper and lower case, these were helpful if the character encoding could not encode a full 94 distinct codes.

   Question: This machine does not have an obvious "best" size for characters. Briefly discuss the benefits and problems you'd encounter on this machine using 5, 6, 7 and 8 bits per character. (1 point)

3. Show what "22C:60, 9:30 MWF, 105 MLH" would look like as a punched paper tape in the ILLIAC I character encoding. Don't include the quotes. (1 point)

4. Give the 7-bit ASCII representation of the text "22C:60, 9:30 MWF, 105 MLH" Don't include the quotes. Give your result as a column of binary numbers. (1 point)