There have been discussions among various members about the need or desire for a series of classes about the fundamentals of microcomputers and microcontrollers.
What I envision is a multi-part series:
-
Digital Electronics. Digital versus analog electronics. Signal levels. Logic Gates. Flip Flops. Decoders.
-
Computer Architecture. Memory. How a stored program machine works. Registers, Instruction Sets and Machine language. Computer arithmetic.
-
Microcomputers and Microcontrollers. A survey of parts. Processors and Busses. Input and Output devices.
-
Programming. How to tell that machine what to do. Bootstrapping. Assemblers, Interpreters and Compilers. Linkers and Loaders.
This is just a very preliminary outline. Some of these categories may need to be further broken down and any of them can use classes to go into further detail or hands-on lab work.