Lab Info

• YAK Info

  • YAK Kernel Specification

• 8086 Info

  • 8086 Assembly Language
  • 8086 Instruction Set
  • 8086 Interrupt Mechanism: 8259A PIC
  • C Calling Convention and the 8086

• Class Software Tools

  • Known Tool Problems
  • Building Programs with the Tools
  • C86 Compiler Features
  • NASM Syntax
  • Emu86 Manual
  • Enabling remote execution of the tools on ECEn Linux machines
    • If you ssh in to the ECEn Linux machines, you are likely to see this error message: "Error: no display specified". This can be addressed by a combination of setting the DISPLAY environment variable on the local machine, and making sure you use the -X switch on the command line to ssh. See the solutions discussed here.
  • GitHub Repository
    • This site has the source code to all class tools if you want to run them on your own computer. It appears that the code compiles and runs "as is" on Linux and Mac OS X. I'm not sure about Cygwin/Windows. Let me know if you go that route so I can update this with an appropriate note.
    • CAUTION #1: You're on your own here in getting the tools to work! This is not officially supported or maintained as part of this class, so the TAs and instructor can't be expected to help.
    • CAUTION #2: Remember, ECEn Linux machines are the reference platform for correctness -- your code will be evaluated on these machines. I have seen few if any discrepancies (between, say, code running on my Mac and the same code running on a spice machine) but no one can guarantee that you'll see exactly the same execution behavior.

• Class Downloads

  • clib.s
  • clib.h
  • simptris.s
  • simptris.h

• uC/OS Info

  • The uC/OS real-time kernel

• C Help

  • C tutorials
  • Code example: TCBs, pointers, lists

• Linux Help

  • Setting Your Path
  • Scroll bars, command completion, tcsh, etc.
  • Emacs notes and tutorial links
  • Help with Make and Unix

Assigned Reading / Viewing

Note: Links to some articles will work only from machines on campus, due to licensing restrictions.

• Athens Affair
  • V. Prevelakis, D. Spinellis, "The Athens Affair", Spectrum, July 2007 [ download ]
• High-Frequency Trading
  • David Schneider, "The Microsecond Market", IEEE Spectrum, June 2012 [ download ]
  • 60 Minutes, "Wall Street: the speed traders", June 2011 [ view ]
• Electronic Voting
  • David L. Dill and Daniel Castro, "Point/counterpoint: The U.S. should ban paperless electronic voting machines", Communications of the ACM, October 2008 [ download ]
  • Charlene O'Hanlon, "A Conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann", Queue, November 2006 [ download ]
  • Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten, "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine", Proc. of the USENIX Workshop on Accurate Electronic Voting Technology, 2007 [ download ]
• Timing
  • Edward A. Lee, "Computing Needs Time", CACM, May 2009 [ download ]
• Therac-25
  • N.G. Leveson, C.S. Turner, "An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents", Computer, July 1993 [ download ]
• Memory Testing
  • Michael Barr, "Fast Accurate Memory Test Suite", www.netrino.com [ download ]
• Software Development
  • David B. Stewart, "Twenty-five common mistakes with real-time software development", Embedded Systems Conference, September 2006 [ download ]

Supplemental Reading / Viewing

• High Frequency Trading
  • "Spread betting", The Economist, 14 August 2010 [ download] [ cached ]
  • Scott Patterson, Geoffrey Rogow, "What's behind high-frequency trading", The Wall Street Journal, 1 August 2009 [ download ]
  • Matthew Philips, "Fast, Loose, and Out of Control", Newsweek, 1 June 2010 [ download ] [ cached ]
  • "The Impact of High-frequency Trading: Manipulation, Distortion or a Better-functioning Market?", Knowledge@Wharton, 30 September 2009 [ download ]
  • Karl Denninger, "HFT: The High Frequence Trading Scam", Seeking Alpha, 24 July 2009 [ download ] [ cached ]
  • David Schneider, "Trading at the speed of light", IEEE Spectrum, October 2011 [ download ]
• Electronic Voting
  • Anthony DiFranco, Andrew Petro, Emmett Shear, Vladimir Vladimirov, "Small vote manipulations can swing elections", CACM, October 2004 [ download ]
  • David L. Dill, Bruce Schneier, Barbara Simons, "Voting and technology: who gets to count your vote?", CACM, August 2003 [ download ]
  • "Electronic voting not hard to hack" (video), CNN, October 27, 2010 [ view ]
• Software Development
  • Michael Barr, "Five top causes of nasty embedded software bugs", EE Times, 1 April 2010 [ download ]
  • Michael Barr, "Five more top causes of nasty embedded software bugs", EE Times, 2 November 2010 [ download ]
  • Kent Beck, "Embracing change with Extreme Programming", Computer, October 1999 [ download ]
  • Christof Ebert, Capers Jones, "Embedded Software: Facts, Figures, and Futures", Computer, April 2009 [ download ]
  • Jack G. Ganssle, "A guide to code inspections" [ download ]
  • Philip E. Ross, "The exterminators", IEEE Spectrum, September 2005 [ download ]
  • Laurie A. Williams, Robert R. Kessler, "All I really need to know about pair programming I learned in kindergarten", CACM, May 2000 [ download ]
• Forensics
  • Richard P. Mislan, "Cellphone Crime Solvers", IEEE Spectrum, July 2010, [ download ]