Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science6.111 — Introductory Digital Systems LaboratoryGeneral Laboratory InformationEach student will be issued his/her own Nubus Laboratory Kit and oscilloscope probes.This kit contains most of the components for the assigned laboratory exercises. Whilewiring and some debugging can be done at home, most exercises require the use of anoscilloscope, logic analyzer, and other special equipment not included in the kit. In theDigital Systems Laboratory (Room 38–600) you will find logic analyzers with dual tracesampling oscilloscopes and the special equipment needed for the lab exercises. The lab willbe open from 9:00 a.m. to 10:45 p.m. Monday through Friday, 12 noon to 5:45 p.m. Saturday,and 12 noon to 10:45 p.m. on Sunday. These times are subject to change and the lab will beclosed on some holidays. Actual opening times will be posted in the lab far enough ahead sothat you can make plans. The lab will not be staffed by Teaching Assistants (TAs) or LabAides (LAs) all of the open hours. The schedule of TAs and LAs will be available on thecourse web pages.PUT YOUR NAME ON ANYTHING THAT YOU BUILD IN THELABORATORY AND LEAVE UNATTENDED. OTHERWISE, IT MAYBE GONE WHEN YOU RETURN. There are some lockers for the safe stor-age of your kits along the 5th and 6th floor corridors of building 34. Apply atthe 6th-floor instrument room desk for one.It is important to remember that you will be working with a variety of sophisticatedequipment, including computers. Sometimes this equipment doesn’t work. You should an-ticipate the possibility that the computer systems will be “down” at precisely the wrongmoment, and should give yourself enough extra time to accommodate equipment outages.You should also remember to back up all of your important files. In 6.111 you will havethe opportunity of keeping critical files both on sunpals and in your ATHENA locker. Doso. We will be generally unsympathetic to an excuse (for a late assignment) that involves afile being lost or erased.When the sixth floor entrance is locked, the alarm system for the lab is usually activated.You are to enter and exit via the 5th floor. If you get stuck in the Lab after closing,you MUST have a T.A. let you out.Additional equipment may be obtained from the Digital Instrument Room (38–601) from9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. During other hours some, but not all, of thisequipment is available from the fifth floor instrument room (38–501).NOTE: You must read the EECS safety policy and sign the acknowledgment form beforesigning out your lab kit or doing any work in the lab.6.111 — General Laboratory Information 2MEASURING INSTRUMENTSIn this subject, you will design, build, and test a variety of digital systems. Virtually ALLnewly built digital systems of even moderate complexity do NOT work the very first time.Even if you were to be that lucky or careful, you would still find it necessary to use somemeasuring instrument in order to verify the functionality of your digital system.Many digital systems will have sound or video (TV displays) output. Even if these ap-pear to be correct, it is still necessary to perform a careful check of subsystems. Few of uswould accept an airplane simply because it flew! At the very least, we would want someoneto verify that the engines are bolted on securely. Likely we would want several other checksto be made before we flew in it.We have provided a variety of measuring instruments. In your lab kit there are LEDswhich can be used to observe the state of slowly varying signals. In the laboratory, we havemulti-channel logic analyzers available which also include a two-channel high speed digitaloscilloscope. These measuring instruments can provide you with a substantial amount ofinformation which is useful for the debugging and testing of your digital systems.The oscilloscope displays an analog waveform and is useful for verifying that your digitalsignal is indeed a binary signal. If you miswire your circuit and happen to connect twooutputs together, you will easily see that the resulting signal is not a logic one or zero butsomewhere in between. An oscilloscope is also quite useful for measuring short time intervals.One of the chief benefits of logic analyzers is that you have many channels available andthus you can see many signals at the same time. Logic analyzers can be used in two modes.As a timing analyzer, they are similar to an oscilloscope. However their display is quantizedin both voltage level (one or zero) and in timing resolution (ten or twenty nanoseconds).When used as a state analyzer, the signals are sampled with your system clock and provideyou with a compact display of many signals at the times when they really matter. This isvery desirable IF your signals are indeed well behaved digital signals.The primary purpose of the first laboratory exercise is to provide you an opportunityto learn how to use these measuring instruments and also how to program a PAL. You willthen put these skills to the test in labs two and three and your final project.Printed September 9,
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