Introduction To Computers
Performing far better than the company projections of 3,000 units for the first year, in the first month after its release Tandy Radio Shack´s first desktop computer — the TRS-80 — sells 10,000 units. The TRS-80 line of computers later included color, portable, and handheld versions before being discontinued in the early 1990s. Computer hardware understands only 1’s and 0’s, so instructions are encoded as binary numbers in a format called machine language. Just as we use letters to encode human language, computers use binary numbers to encode machine language. Microprocessors are digital systems that read and execute machine language instructions. However, humans consider reading machine language to be tedious, so we prefer to represent the instructions in a symbolic format called assembly language. 1 1 Architectural State And Instruction Set This is a flexible programme, allowing students to study at their own pace (either part-time or full-time), adjusting the intensity of the le...