QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. The letters ISA are an acronym for what phrase?
2. The ISA bus system supports what size data transfers?
3. Is the ISA bus interface often used for memory expansion?
4. Develop an ISA bus interface that is decoded at addresses 310H–313H. This interface must contain an 8255 accessed via these port addresses. (Don’t forget to buffer all inputs to the ISA bus card.)
5. Develop an ISA bus interface that decodes ports 0340H–0343H to control a single 8254 timer.
6. Develop a 32-bit PCI bus interface that adds a 27C256 EPROM at memory addresses FFFF0000H–FFFF7FFFH.
7. Given a 74LS244 buffer and a 74LS374 latch, develop an ISA bus interface that contains an 8-bit input port at I/O address 308H and an 8-bit output port at I/O address 30AH.
8. Create an ISA bus interface that allows four channels of analog output signals from 0 to 5.0 V each. These four channels must be decoded at I/O addresses 300H, 310H, 320H, and 330H. Also develop software that supports the four channels.
9. Redo question 8, but instead of four output channels, use four ADCs to create four analog input channels at the same addresses.
10. Using an 8254 timer or timers, develop a darkroom timer on an ISA bus card. Your timer must generate a logic 0 for 1/100-second intervals from 1/100 second to five minutes. Use the system clock of 8 MHz as a timing source. The software you develop must allow the user to select the time from the keyboard. The output signal from the timer must be a logic 0 for the duration of the selected time and must be passed through an inverter to enable a solid- state relay that controls the photographic enlarger.
11. Interface a 16550 UART to the personal computer through the PCI bus interface. Develop software that transmits and receives data at baud rates of 300, 1200, 9600, and 19,200. The UART must respond to I/O ports 1E3XH.
12. The ISA bus can transfer data that are wide at the rate of 8 MHz.
13. Describe how the address can be captured from the PCI bus.
14. What is the purpose of the configuration memory found on the PCI bus interface?
15. Define the term plug-and-play.
16. What is the purpose of the C>BE connection on the PCI bus system?
17. How is the BIOS tested for the PCI BIOS extension?
18. Develop a short program that interrogates the PCI bus, using the extension to the BIOS, and reads the 32-bit contents of configuration register 08H. For this problem, consider that the bus and unit numbers are 0000H.
19. What advantage does the PCI bus exhibit over the ISA bus?
20. How fast does the PCI Express bus transfer serial data?
21. What is a lane in a PCI Express interface?
22. The parallel port is decoded at which I/O addresses in a personal computer?
23. Can data be read from the parallel port?
24. The parallel port connecter found on the back of the computer has pins.
25. Most computers contain at least one serial communication port. What is this port called?
26. Develop a C++ function that sends the letters ABC through the serial port and continues to do so until the letters ABC are returned through the serial port. Show all functions needed to accomplish this, including any initialization.
27. Modify Example 15–9 so it sends a character string of any length.
28. Search the Internet and detail, in a short report, variants as used in the Visual Programming environment.
29. Can a USB device appear as a COM device?
30. What data rates are available for use on the USB?
31. How are data encoded on the USB?
32. What is the maximum cable length for use with the USB?
33. Will the USB ever replace the ISA bus?
34. How many device addresses are available on the USB?
35. What is NRZI encoding?
36. What is a stuffed bit?
37. If the following raw data are sent on the USB, draw the waveform of the signal found on the USB: (1100110000110011011010).
38. How long can a data packet be on the USB?
39. What is the purpose of the NAK and ACK tokens on the USB?
40. Describe the difference in data transfer rates on the PCI bus when compared with the AGP.
41. What is the transfer rate in a system using an 8X AGP video card?
42. What is the transfer rate of a PCI Express 16X video card?
43. On the Internet, locate a few video card manufacturers and find how much memory is avail- able on AGP video cards. List the manufacturers and the amount of memory on the cards.
44. Using the Internet, write a report that details any USB controller.