TOYCOM - a tool for teaching elementary computer concepts

Abstract

Many of those who teach introductory computing courses have recognized the pedagogic value of a very simple computer model. A large number of introductory textbooks on computing contain a section explaining the logical components of such a system (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8). These usually include an introduction to assembler language and machine level programming of a machine which is sometimes called the minimum configuration computer model. All of the previously implemented models of which we are aware have been constructed to operate in batch mode. After having used such systems for some time, we felt that they too soon introduced students to the aggravation of mispunched cards and long waits for runs, only to discover minor syntactic errors. We felt that the simple computer model's pedagogic value would be significantly increased by implementing it in the interactive mode. In order to test this thesis, we have designed and implemented such a system. Our interactive computer model is named TOYCOM, an obvious acronym for toy com puter. TOYCOM is a submonitor-assembler-interpreter which can be collectively called a simulator. It presently runs as a submonitor under BASIC-PLUS, which runs under the RSTS-E operating system of the medium to large-scale DEC PDP-11 minicomputers. It is also written in BASIC-PLUS.