Overview
A set of pilot lessons built to ride on top of two emulator projects: five lessons for the TMS1100 Microcomputer Trainer emulator, and three for the Minivac 601 emulator. The emulators give students a real machine to poke at; these lessons give a teacher a reason and a sequence -; objectives, a hook, a hands-on block, and an exit ticket per session.
Background
Building an emulator is fun, but an emulator on its own is a museum piece. The interesting question is whether you can use these old machines to teach the thing they were originally sold to teach: how computers count, reason, and remember. So the lessons lean hard on the original 1960s-;80s manuals -; the Minivac books and the Microcomputer Trainer manual -; which, as it turns out, still hold up remarkably well.
The TMS1100 track marches from binary counting (“counting like a machine”) through a student's first two-instruction program, into loops and registers, branching decisions, and multi-digit values. The Minivac track starts further down, at the level of a single circuit and the first bit, then builds toward relay logic and a relay that remembers -; the physical roots of memory and reasoning.
Current Status
Pilot material exists and is sequenced; this is a teaching draft rather than a polished published curriculum.
- 5 TMS1100 pilot lessons drafted (binary, first program, loops/swaps, decisions, multi-digit values).
- 3 Minivac 601 pilot lessons drafted (circuits/the first bit, the machine reasons, a relay remembers).
- Pairs with the TMS1100 and Minivac emulator projects -; each lesson assumes students have the matching emulator in front of them.