Chapter Two took me significantly longer to finish than chapter one, but mostly because I decided to get cheeky with the software. Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should in the interest of efficiency or mental health preservation.
The second chapter focuses on translating the gates you've already made into the manipulation of binary numbers. As your project you build Adders, and Incrementers, and finally, your computer's Arithmetic Logic Unit, a chip for doing simple mathematical calculations using two 16 bit binary inputs.
This section's background information is shorter than the last, but before you start the projects at the end of the chapter, I highly, highly HIGHLY recommend that you read the entire appendix, telling you all about the software and the programming language. Read it through. Read it twice. Learn how to use the software and the language , because when it comes time to use the ALU, it can be hard to distinguish between which problems are caused by syntax and which are caused by misunderstanding the concepts.
Like I mentioned before, while working on the ALU I got a little cocky, and decided to start designing my own chips and tests to deconstruct the problem. Two hours of hair pulling later, I find out the book has a section devoted to designing tests (although it specifies that a students really shouldn't need to do so in their projects). I discovered that my problem had to do with typing the wrong number of spaces in my .cmp file. Other fun problems included: linking the ALU's OUT pins to an component chip, making an internal pin with a value of zero, and figuring out the difference between negating a binary number and making a binary number negative. These were all problems that could have easily been avoided had I read the appendix before starting the programming. Still, I feel that much more accomplished.
Another good resource is the forum. It's still very active, and there are plenty of people there willing to help with problems. They have a strict policy of not outright stating an answer, which I think is great, but I did notice that could sometimes leave the questioner be guzzled if someone was withholding information that would make it 'too easy.' So it shouldn't be your only resource, but I am 100% pro internet collaboration, and it appears to work well for this project. I'll be sure to set up an account for chapter 3.
With my ALU finally functional and a lot more HDL know-how under my belt, I'm ready to press forward and onward in the world of binary logic. Chapter 3 awaits!
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