DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTER HARDWARE LAB

As computers become increasingly complex, computer science students have less tangible understanding of computer hardware. Most modern computer organization courses give students little hands-on experience in physically designing computers lab. The exceptions typically either have students work with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) or pre-built single board computers, both of which shield students from the actual hardware underneath. This paper describes a computer design lab sequence that I included as part ofmy computer organization class. The labs were designed to require no expensive test equipment beyond a simple multimeter. Prior to this class the students have had no previous digital design experience or exposure to electronic circuits. Nevertheless, all students assigned the labs completed them successfully. Students found the labs stimulating and praised them in end-of-semester evaluations. In solving the problems of slowly updated laboratory equipment, heavy hardware wastage and potential danger in the course of traditional computer hardware assembling experiment, this article proposes a design and concrete implementation of virtual laboratory for computer hardware assembling based on immersive virtual reality (VR) environment. In addition, with rich scenes and tutorial, this design combines the head-mounted display and somatosensory (Sensory stimuli) controller to greatly promote the immersion and interactivity, thus enhancing the interests of students. This is a new trail to improve the traditional experimental teaching effect.