News & Notes

Class News

• 2 Jan 2000: Final grades are now available online. The final grade distribution (including two students who didn't take the final exam and thus got F's) was:

  Grade	Count
  A	3
  B	5
  C	9
  D	1
  F	3

  
  If you have any questions about your grade or would like to see your final exam, please send email to elm@csee.umbc.edu to make an appointment or stop by during office hours during the spring semester.
• 14 Dec 1999: Solutions for all homeworks are now posted below.
• 13 Dec 1999: Because of problems with linux.gl and one of the AFS file servers over the past few days, there will be a one day extension for Project #3. It is now due on Wednesday, December 15th.
• 10 Dec 1999: The FsUnixWrite() routine in filesys.c should call write(), not read().
• 3 Dec 1999: Code for a routine to identify the memory address that a load or store instruction is referencing is now available.
• 2 Dec 1999: Homework #6 has now been assigned, and is due on Thursday, December 9th.
• 2 Dec 1999: Grades through Project #3 design, HW #4, and the midterm have been posted. Please send email to elm@csee.umbc.edu if there are any errors.
• 10 Nov 1999: Because of a bug in semaphores in Project #2, the due date has been extended to Tuesday, November 16th. Please recopy the following files from ~etmiller/../pub/dlx: process.c process.h dlxos.s dlxtraps.h. The changes to process.c are minor, and shouldn't conflict with your changes. You need to change two lines of code in ProcessFork() and add a few lines of code to the end of ProcessSuspend().
• 22 Oct 1999: Please get a new copy of dlxos.tgz from /afs/umbc.edu/users/e/t/etmiller/pub/dlx/dlxos.tgz. This version should be much easier and clearer tfo work with or Project #2 (and I've actually done most of the assignment, including running user programs and testing traps from user programs). The version you're currently using may not work correctly with the simulator. In addition, those who are doing this work at home should recopy and recompile dlxsim.tgz. Because of the mixup, you may turn in an updated version of the Project #2 design document any time until October 28th. However, the project code is still due November 4th.
• 1 Oct 1999: Effective Friday, October 8th, Prof. Miller's office hours on Fridays will be 1-2 PM.
• 27 Sep 1999: All of the source files you need for Project #1 are in the dlxos.tgz file, as described below. Please copy the file to somewhere in your home directory tree and untar it using "gtar xzvf dlxos.tgz".
• 24 Sep 1999: Please use the dlxos code from the file /afs/umbc.edu/users/e/t/etmiller/pub/dlx/dlxos.tgz. The location information has also been corrected in the project assignment.
• 23 Sep 1999: Project #1 has been assigned. The design document is due on Thursday, September 30th, and the code is due on Tuesday, October 12th. Please read over the general project information in addition to the assignment itself.
• 15 Sep 1999: The submit class "code" for this section of CMSC 421 is cs421-01.

Homework

NOTE: while the links to all of the homework assignments may exist before they are assigned, the homework may change until the date it's assigned. In other words, doing the homework before it's assigned isn't such a good idea.

• Homework #1 (assigned 14 Sep 1999, due 21 Sep 1999) [solutions]
• Homework #2 (assigned 30 Sep 1999, due 7 Oct 1999) [solutions]
• Homework #3 (assigned 12 Oct 1999, due 19 Oct 1999) [solutions]
• Homework #4 (due 9 Nov 1999) [solutions]
• Homework #5 (due 30 Nov 1999) [solutions]
• Homework #6 (due 9 Dec 1999) [solutions]

Solutions are only accessible to Web browsers in the umbc.edu domain. You're free to download the solutions to another computer, but you must access them from a campus machine or a shell running on a campus machine. If you usually use a different ISP, consider connecting to UMBC and using lynx (a text-based Web browser).

Projects

• Project #1 (design due 30 Sep 1999, code due 12 Oct 1999)
• Project #2 (design due 21 Oct 1999, code due 4 Nov 1999)
• Project #3 (design due 23 Nov 1999, code due 14 Dec 1999)

Exams

• Midterm (26 Oct 1999, in class) [solutions]
• Final exam (Tuesday, 21 Dec 1999, 10:30AM - 12:30PM in FA 018 - the usual classroom)