CS 2260: Media Device Architectures

Instructor: Michael Mateas
Email: michaelm at cc.gatech.edu
Office: TSRB 246
Office hours: TBA

Lecture: TTh 9:35-10:55 in Architecture 309

TAs
Mark Duckworth
Email: gtg696h at mail.gatech.edu
Office Hours: TTh 12:00 - 1:30, CCB Commons

Justin Jang
Email: jang@cc.gatech.edu
Office hours: MW 4:30 - 5:30, T 1:00 - 2:00, CCB Commons

Description

The goal of this course is to understand how computers work from logic gates up through running programs, while emphasizing how this material matters in the context of computational media. Students will also learn how to program in the C programming language, a language particularly suited to systems programming. These concepts will be taught by learning how to program the Nintendo Gameboy Advance.

Grading

Tests (midterms 1 and 2): 30%

Homeworks (roughly weekly): 20%

Projects: 20%

Final: 30%

Books

Programming the Nintendo Gameboy Advance: The Unofficial Guide
Jonathan Harbour
Free online book available here

Introducing to Systems and Networking
Free online book available here

Essential C
A short (45 page) summary of the C language

Pointers and Memory
Describes pointers and memory management in C

GBA Memory Map
Memory Map for the GBA - includes description of hardware registers

TONC GBA Guide
A nice guide to GBA programming. Contains more technical details than the Harbour book

Additional web resources linked from the course page

Programming Environment

Will will use the Visual HAM Gameboy Advance development environment. You can download the installer here. HAM is only available for PC and Linux systems. HAM will be available in the STATES lab if you don't have a PC or Linux system. In class I will demonstrate HAM exclusively on a Windows system.

The project site for HAM is currently down. A local copy of the installer can be downloaded here.

HAM includes a visual development environment for writing Gameboy programs in both C and assembly, libraries and include files to simplify Gameboy programming (we won't be using these at first), and Visualboy Advance, an emulator for running Gameboy programs.

Some notes about installing the environment on Windows systems:

When selecting the install directory, you must explicitly type the name of the directory you want to create at the end of the install path. If you just select, for example, c:\progra~1\ as the directory to install into, the installer will install all the HAM directories right under c:\progra~1 rather than in their own directory.
Once you've installed HAM, go into the tools directory of the HAM install, rename the existing vba.exe to vba-old.exe, and rename WinVBA.exe (something like that) to vba.exe. This way, when you launch a GBA program in the Visualboy Advance emulator from within HAM, it will launch with the correct version.