Course Syllabus

Please post all course-related questions in the Piazza page so that the whole class may benefit from your conversation.  Not all posts require a reply from the instructor/TA and often it is better for students to hash out an answer to a question.

To contact the TAs, open Canvas Inbox, compose a new message, select this course, then next to the ‘To’ box click the address book, select “Teaching Assistants”, then choose the name(s) of TAs you wish to contact.

Please email your instructor only for matters of a personal or private (grading) nature.  The instructor or a TA will reply to most course-related questions within 24-48 hours.

Office Hours are held via WebEx. Please click the NAME next to the time for the link to the relevant room.

Listing by Day: (note: We're still getting the links up and running. If the link isn't up, the room isn't functioning yet)

eCampus Resources - These resources will be useful for all of your classes throughout the term...  Library Information, Helpdesk Contact Info, Canvas Tech Support, etc...

Syllabus Link

Schedule Link

Syllabus Quiz: This quiz is based on the syllabus, so understand the syllabus before taking it. You'll need to score 100% in order to access the Week 1 materials! Don't Fall Behind!

NOTE: This quiz is only available to currently-registered students.

NOTE: Some links in this syllabus page may only be accessible to currently enrolled students.

Instructor Introduction

Course / Designer Introduction

Welcome to CS271 (PDF)

• Introduce Yourself

  Hop on over to Piazza (the link on the navigation sidebar will take you straight there) and introduce yourself!

The following consists of installation & setup tutorials for Visual Studio 2017, and alternate videos for VS2010 (which work pretty well for 2012 and 2013).

Coming out of this module you should have done the following:

• Set up Microsoft Visual Studio
• Install and configure Kip Irvine's libraries
• Started a new Assembly code project
• Verified that Visual Studio is installed properly

Please also note that your Visual Studio install will need to be "Activated" with your Product Key.  You can retrieve this key at any time through the Dreamspark interface by looking at products you already own, and clicking on the Visual Studio product.

Finally, note that if you want to try it, you should be able to access Visual Studio on our OSU Citrix Servers as follows:

On Citrix, choose the “Desktop” choice at the top (or bottom?) of the screen after you are logged in and then the “MIME EECS Desktops” choice. This will create a session as if you were logged on to an on-campus lab computer.  In the Citrix session, download the updated zip file here and extract it to

Z:\bin\CS271\

You will have to make this folder (it does not exist by default). All your projects should live in this directory, since in order to execute code on Citrix the executable should be in the bin folder or a subdirectory thereof. Also note that you need "execute" permissions in the 'bin' folder, which may or may not be set by default. If you are having trouble with this folder they can create/reset it here. Please keep me updated on this, as it is new this term.

NOTE 1: You do not have to download/install the Irvine .msi file if you use the Citrix machine (in fact it won't let you). But you will have to transfer it from the network drive V:\Irvine (which should be mapped to "\\stak\engr.oregonstate.edu\" to the network drive Z:\Irvine and update the project properties.  Once you get to the point where you're opening a project, do the following:

1. Open the Project.sln from "Z:\bin\CS271\Project32_VS2015 " after you've extracted it to this location (one of the videos shows you this).
2. Select Project (from the top menu) -> Project Properties
3. In the project properties window select "Linker"
4. On the right you should see "Additional Library Directories:" and c:\Irvine part of the listing here
5. Change c:\Irvine to Z:\Irvine
6. Now select "Microsoft Macro Assembler" from the same part you selected "Linker"
7. Under "Include Paths" change c:\Irvine to Z:\Irvine
8. File->Save All
9. Close Visual Studio, and re-open Project.sln from the same directory.

NOTE 2:Visual Studio is showing as expired (may happen for the next few days) just "Sign in..." and use your oregonstate credentials. This method was tested and worked for me 9/22/2016 to run the template.asm file.

NOTE 3: Finally, be aware that the files will NOT reside on your home computer, and if you want them on your computer/laptop you'll have to transfer them using an SFTP utility.

Video Resources

• Get Set Part 1

  This video walks through how to obtain Visual Studio. I suggest installing the newest version you can (2017 as in this video), but Visual Studio 2010 is what's shown in the other class videos.

  
  

  NOTE: If you want to use Visual Studio 2010, use this video (LINK). The link in TEACH is now called "Microsoft Dreamspark Login" in the "External Sites" section near the bottom-right of the page.

• Get Set Part 2

  In this video, I explain how to install and configure the libraries provided by the textbook's author.

  
  

  NOTE: For VS2010, use this video (LINK). The author's website has been updated. You can still find the Visual Studio 2010 getting started guide at:  http://kipirvine.com/asm/gettingStartedVS2010/index.htm 

• Get Set Part 3

  This last video shows how to start a new Assembly code project and verify that Visual Studio is installed properly.
  
  NOTE: For VS2010, use this video (LINK)

Other Resources

• Syntax Highlighting

  By default, Visual Studio does not include syntax highlighting for Assembly code. This can sometimes make it more difficult to read your source code.

  • For Visual Studio 2015 and later, you may use this AsmHighlighter.
  • For Visual Studio 2010/2012, I suggest visiting the asmHighlighter website (available at http://asmhighlighter.codeplex.com/) and installing the free plugin for Visual Studio.
  • Either way, you may also use an external editor (such as Notepad++, which is great for MASM), then compile/run within Visual Studio (this is what I do).