Courses/Computer Science/CPSC 457.S2016/Lecture Notes/L2

Lecture 1 - The Revenge of Hardware and the Core Operating System Concepts

Concepts

• History
  • Prehistory (Mechanical Tools, Looms, Babbage)
  • First Generation (Vacuum Tubes)
  • Second Generation (Transistors & Batch Systems)
  • Third Generation (ICs and Multiprogramming) -> UNIX
  • Fourth Generation (Personal Computers)
  • Fifth Generation (Mobile Computing)
  • "Sixth Generation" (Cloud)
• Architecture
  • Overview (Classical Architecture)
  • Processors
  • Memory
  • Disks

Slides

My slides are available as PDF PPTX or Handout PDF

Notes

• I had hoped to finish hardware in this lecture, but you can find the remaining parts in Courses/Computer Science/CPSC 457.S2016/Lecture Notes/L3.

Questions for next time

1. Where is the CT desk?
   1. The Continuous Tutorial desk is Outside MS 151 (the help desk)

1. How do I get started on Assignment 1?
   1. Break it down into component parts.
      1. How do I get a list of files in a directory?
      2. How do I find the type of a file?
      3. How do I get the size of a file?
      4. How do I calculate an MD5 checksum of the file?

1. Should Assignment 1 display information on hidden files and directories(files prefixed with '.') or should those be omitted?
   1. You can omit hidden files by default. If you feel like extending the assignment add an option to your program to include them.