The goals of the course are to introduce you to the mysteries of microcomputer operations, using the PC Intel based machines. Today microcomputers, commonly known as PC's, are as common as television sets and VCR's. Most of us are users, hardly aware of how the familiar PC box achieves an unbelievable list of tasks for us without too much complaining: word-processing, printing, accounting, drawing, painting, talking, listening, phoning, interneting, etc., etc. For those who have braved the course, the computer will no longer be a black box. The course will cover number theory, microcomputer system, architecture, instruction set and assembly directives of the 8088/8086 microprocessor family. Comparison to the higher processor systems such as 80386, 80486 and 80586 will be made at the end of the course. You will be introduced to computer algorithms and assembly language programming by writing a few programs for multi-byte addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The philosophy of the course is to teach by examples. We will present complete working programs at the 16-bit level, each of which will be demonstrated before the class using the debugger provided by the Microsoft Macro Assembler package. Starting with simple programs, we will progress to a complete program package: a 32-bit hexadecimal calculator. We will use the textbook by Barry Brey as a reference. All class materials will be handed out in advance. The order in which materials will be presented is given below.