CMSC 311 - Project #2

computer organization

c m s c 311
s u m m e r 2 0 0 3

Project #2

Due Tuesday, July 1, 11:59 PM (just before midnight)
~~Sunday, June 29, 11:59 PM (just before midnight)~~

Posted: June 9

Late Penalty

There will be a 5% deduction per day after the due date. All projects are due by July 12 (i.e., the latest date I will accept submissions). Notice that by then, you will lose about 60% of your total grade.

Purpose

The goals of the project are:

Learn how to "buy" parts for your own PC

Academic Integrity Statement

Please note that *all* programming projects in this course (including this one) are to be done independently or with the assistance of the instructional staff of this course only, unless otherwise specified IN PRINT by official webpages.

Please review the policies outlined on the class syllabus concerning the use of class computer accounts and concerning the University's Code of Academic Integrity. The instructors of this course will review the programs submitted by students for potential violations of the Code of Academic Integrity and if it is believed that a violation has occurred it will be referred to the Office of Judicial Programs and the Student Honor Council.

Hardcoding is considered a violation of academic integrity

Collaboration on P2

If you want to work in teams of two, you may. In this case, you should submit a README file which says the names of the two people (and your user IDs). You should also submit ONE version.

You may consult anyone about how to design your own PC, including best places to buy on the web, etc. This includes class members, etc. However, all web design must be original, all explanations should be your own, etc.

Designing Your Own PC for $1000

Your goal is to design a PC that costs $1000 or less. The idea is to maximize the effectiveness of your computer, for the amount you spend.

These are the kinds of parts you may have to consider:

CPU Most likely, AMD or Intel.
Monitor
Motherboard
Case
Cooling/Fans/Heat Sink
Keyboards, etc.

There may be more parts to consider.

You do not have to consider tax, shipping and handling, or operating systems as part of the cost.

You may wish to have more than one webpage. Your main webpage should be your username, followed by .html. For example, if your username is sch1101, then your main webpage should be sch1101.html.

As you make your decisions on parts, you should include the following:

A link to a recommendation for the part you chose.
The price, so it's easy to see.
A link to some vendor that has the price of the product.
An explanation of why you picked the part you did.
Other choices for that part, and why you didn't choose it. (At least, one other, preferably 2-3).

You will be graded on the clarity of your presentation, and how much "research" it appears you did. You should explain the research you did.

In particular, someone reading your webpage should find it easy to see the prices, easy to see it totals correctly, be better informed about how to buy a PC for themselves, and what decision making is needed.

Starting Off

Probably the first suggested place to look is: ArsTechnica Guide

You should make some changes to your choice of system.

If it is exactly the same as ArsTechnica, we will deduct points. You should do more research than just this site.

If you go to "Class Notes" (see link on main webpage), there is a link to "Geek Websites", and you can see some other websites that are technical in nature, for example, anandtech.com.

How to Write HTML

HTML consists of tags. For example <html> is a tag. There are beginning tags, such as <html> and closing tags such as </html>. This is like open and close braces.

You can often view HTML of webpages by "viewing source". Unfortunately, some sites have been developed by using tools such as DreamWeaver, which can produce webpages that are hard to read. You can read my own webpages, just to see what it looks like.

The general structure of a webpage looks like:

<HTML>
  <HEAD>
    <TITLE>
       Put title here
    </TITLE>
  </HEAD>

  <BODY bgcolor=white>
       Put HTML here
  </BODY>
</HTML>

HTML consists of a head (which is mostly unusued) and a body, where the text of HTML goes.

Here are some useful tags:

<P> is used for a paragraph break. Official HTML says that you should begin a paragraph with <P> and ending in </P>.
<BR> is used for a line break.
You can put a heading between <H1> and </H1>. You can put a heading between <H2> and </H2>. The difference? <H1> and </H1> produces a larger heading than <H2> and </H2>.
Links look like:
```
<A HREF="url-name"> underlined link </A>
```
where you place an URL where it says "url-name", and what you want underlined for the link. For example:
```
<A HREF="http://yahoo.com"> Click here to go to Yahoo </A>
```
You can add images:
```
<IMG SRC="url-name"> 
```
This could also be the name of a local file
You can make an unorder list as:
```
<UL>
  <LI> First item
  <LI> Second item
</UL>
```
where <UL> starts off a list, </UL> ends a list, and <LI> refers to items (which are "bulleted"). There are numbered lists, that are similar except they start with <OL> and end in </OL>

If you link to a local webpage, you just need to give a relative path as in UNIX.

You can do a Google search to find other HTML help, or ask friends to help out with HTML advice.

Testing

To try out your webpage, create a directory called public_html in your class account. It should be in the home directory.

Use a plain text editor to edit your files. Files should end in .htm or .html, unless it's some other kind of file (shouldn't be).

Change the permission to make it world accessible as in: chmod o+rx public_html. You may need to do the same with your home directory.

You also need to change permission on various files to make it world-readable. chmod o+r chs11001.html. You should NOT make any other files world or group accessible.

You can then view your webpage by typing something

http://www.dc.umd.edu/~chs11001/chs11001.html

in your browser, where you replace chs11001 with your own login ID.

You can use other accounts, such as your WAM account or your own personal website, if you want, to test.

Submitting

You should tar your file and subdirectory. Thus, when we untar, we should see the following:

You must TAR the file, even if it contains a single HTML file.
Actually, you need a second file, since you need a README. This file can be blank, if you aren't working with a partner.
A file like sch1101.html (but with sch1101 replaced by your own user ID). NOTICE this ends in .html. If you write your main HTML file that ends in .htm, we will deduct 10 points. BE CAREFUL. This must be a webpage viewable in a browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer.
If you intend to use more than one file and/or have images, all remaining files should appear in a directory called sch11001.dir. Again, replace sch11001 with your user ID. If you only use a single HTML file (and no images, etc).
You should be able to tar a file and any subdirectories using
```
tar cvf p2.tar *
```
in the directory where sch11001.dir and B>sch11001.html appears.
There is a maximum limit in the amount you can submit. We should have it set to 750 Kbytes total. So if you do use images, use JPG and moderately low quality.
You can use a webpage editor (FrontPage, Word, DreamWeaver), etc.
Images are NOT required, as long as it's clear what is going on. Some nice submissions have been made without using fancy HTML editors. In general, nice webpages won't get you a lot of points, though certainly a nice visual appearance doesn't hurt. In general, it would be nice to avoid too much Javascript and the like, but that's up to you.

See the class syllabus for policies concerning email
Last Modified: Thu Feb 13 09:13:38 EST 2003

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