Contents These notes are designed to supplement the textbook in a course on low-level programming language (assembly language), CSc 116, given by Lin Jensen at Bishop's University. Much of the introductory material on how computers work, binary and hexadecimal number systems, and machine operations in general, can be found in greater detail in many books on assembly language, regardless of the particular processor used.
The goal of this course is to understand how a typical machine-language instruction set causes a computer to actually do things by fetching instructions from memory and carrying them out, moving data around and transforming it. The computer consists of a number of chips, connected by a common set of parallel wires, or "Bus," since it delivers a lot of electrical signals to the same place at the same time.
Figure 1. Block diagram of a computer
The bus carries data, address, and control information. Figure 1 shows how various chips are connected.
Under construction 
Contents
Prepared by Lin Jensen, Bishop's University