Author Description

Product Description The book includes a CD and 2 PCBs. In the world today, computers are used to control everything from children s toys to spacecraft. Controlling external devices is an important and very popular function of computers. But how is it done? How do computers control such devices? How does software interact with the hardware? This book offers readers a hands-on approach to understanding the important hardware/software computer interface of the most popular computer systems. All the relevant components are defined in easy-to-understand language and the book explains how they all work together in the computer. It does this by working with the reader to designing and building hardware circuits for the computer interface and then writing programs that operate the hardware. The relevant hardware components are provided as are the programs for those readers not wishing to write their own. The book: teaches the reader to write VB programs explains the main function of PC buses shows how to interface external devices to a PC using an ISA bus designs hardware circuits to control the I/O signals of a parallel port and writes VB programs to control the designed hardware using the Intel 8255PPI, shows the techniques for interfacing a general purpose programmable peripheral interface device to the microprocessor system bus using an ADC0804 chip, shows how to set up a system for collecting analog values (analogue to digital conversion) using a DAC0800 chip, shows how to set up a system to output analog values (digital to analogue conversion) develops a hardware interface circuit to use the 8254PIT (Programmable Interval Timer) and then writes a VB program teaches the reader how to design hardware and software for a complete PC based data acquisition (DAQ) system using components and software developed in earlier chapters. Review In the early days of courses in Computer Science, students were usually introduced to programming