CPSC 4899Independent StudySpring 2008

Instructor
Dr. Edward L. Bosworth
Center for Commerce and Technology 443
(706) 565-4128
e-mail:
website:

Course Description: This course is designed to provide undergraduate students in Computer Science a foundation and initiation into research and small projects. The project for this offering of the course focuses on the creation, testing, and documentation of an interpreter for the assembly language of the Boz–5, a didactic computer architecture used in the teaching of CPSC 5155. The interpreter is to be written in the Java programming language and should be portable to any computer with a valid JVM.

Prerequisites for this Offering: CPSC 2108 and CPSC 3121.

Goals for the Study:
As a part of this learning experience, the student will accomplish the following tasks.

1.Along with the instructor, identify and characterize the full instruction set of the Boz–5.

2.Resolve the syntactic and semantic ambiguities in the current documentation of
the Boz–5 assembly language.

3.Describe the syntactic rules imposed by the assembler and implement a
syntactic scanner that implements those rules.

4.Describe the semantics of each instruction that is to be interpreted. What is the effect
of that instruction on the state of the machine?

5.Implement a basic GUI so that another student using this software can follow the
execution of the assembler program being interpreted.

6.Develop an initial set of tests of the interpreter itself that can be evolved into
a full set of regression tests by future efforts, if desired.

7.Document the work done to allow for future revisions, if desired.

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CPSC 4899Spring 2008

Assessment Criteria

ItemDue DateCredit

Preliminary Design PlanEnd of Week 220%

Preliminary Design ReviewEnd of Week 420%

In–Progress ReviewEnd of Week 1020%

Presentation of ResultsDuring Exam Week20%

Progress ReportsAll other weeks20%

Instructor responsibilities

  • Clarifying expectations at the outset, including details of assessments.
  • Creating and maintaining a workable plan of implementation.
  • Evolve the course goals in response to issues discovered.
  • Actively responding to student concerns.
  • Providing mentoring, technical assistance and other services to student.

Student responsibilities

  • Managing time and maintaining the discipline required to meet course requirements
  • Deliver the documents specified in the section “Assessment Criteria”.
    Weekly progress reports are expected to be made by e–mail.
    Other required documents can be sent as attachments to e–mail.
  • Meet with the instructor (face to face) at least four times during the semester.
  • Make a public presentation of the work done at some convenient time late in
    the semester, preferably during or just before exam week.
  • Behaving in an ethical and professional manner
  • Adhering to regulations and complying with academic integrity
  • Responding promptly to faculty supervisor’s communications and concerns

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