A Digital Systems Project Laboratory

In the past two years a Digital Systems Project Laboratory has been developed within the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The major objective is to allow the student to acquire a working knowledge of digital systems early in his undergraduate career. The emphasis is experimental, but about one-third of the semester is devoted to classroom activities. The classroom portion of the subject is used to present theoretical material normally unavailable to the student until the latter part of his junior year. However, the principal emphasis, even in the classroom, is on the design and implementation of moderately complex digital systems using integrated circuits at realistic speeds. A modular equipment system is described. An evaluation of the subject has been made by the students and most of them consider it to be as interesting and valuable as most classroom subjects.