Part II - Semester 1

Although I’m already in my third year of studying compsys, I thought it would be useful if I made some posts to fill you in with what I’ve done so far as part of my degree. So, this one’s dedicated to the first semester of the first year of Computer Systems Engineering (at the University of Auckland). This would be the students second year in engineering but first year in the specialisation.

Honestly speaking, the first semester of part II for me was very difficult and didn’t start out as exciting as I had anticipated; but eventually, it all came together and I knew I was in the right place. The four compulsory courses consisted of 2 electrical papers, 1 math paper and 1 compsys paper.

As a computer systems student, during this first semester I felt confused and kind of out of place, surrounded by so many electrical students - I wondered if I was in the right place. But I knew what I wanted to do and I kept reminding myself that the best parts were still to come, and that everything that we're learning in this semester would be useful in later papers. Funnily enough, after the final exams I cleared out all my drawers and threw out every trace of semester one I had left. BAD IDEA! In semester two, I found myself scrambling through old course books and exercise books to find anything I might have left to remind me of the things we had previously learnt. So, the biggest piece of advice I have for anyone going into the second semester of compsys or in fact any other major, I’m sure this would go for any specialisation: DON’T throw out your notes and course books from the first semester because they will definitely, one hundred percent come in useful in the coming semesters.

Breakdown of papers:

ELECTENG202: Circuits and Systems
In this paper, you will learn the fundamentals of electrical circuits and how to analyse them. It covers some basics which you may have previously learnt as well as some new concepts such as:

• DC Circuit Analysis
• Laplace Transforms – time and frequency representation of signals
• First and Second Order Circuits
• AC Circuit Analysis – transient and steady state
• Three Phase Analysis

My advice for this paper would be to make sure you do as many practice questions as you can, and you’ll be familiar with the types of problems that come up and will know how to approach them in a test or exam.

ELECTENG210: Electronics 1
This was definitely the hardest paper of the semester. Here, you learn about how to use the fundamentals that you learn in 202 and apply them. There are a lot of things covered in this paper so it would be a good idea to try to stay on top of the content. But bear in mind that some of the concepts might take multiple replays of certain lectures to get your head around - so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t understand everything the first time you learn about it! Some of the topics covered in this paper include:

• Diodes and Capacitors
• Bipolar Junction Transistors
• Transistor Biasing
• Op-amps – frequency response, characteristic limits and non-linear circuits
• Device Physics – semiconductors, dielectrics, P-N junctions

There is a lot of content covered in this course and it holds a lot of new stuff that you’d be learning about for the first time unlike ELECTENG202, so I’d suggest trying to familiarise yourself with the content beforehand if you’re able to – it would come in handy if you had even a little bit of extra prior knowledge.

COMPSYS201: Fundamentals of Computer Engineering
This is where you get a real taste of what compsys is about. The first half of the course builds on the concepts of combinational and sequential logic that you learnt in ELECTENG101, and the second half is where you are introduced to working with microcontrollers and programming them. A summary of the concepts:

• Combinational/Sequential Logic Design
• Boolean Algebra and Logic Circuits + Hardware Implementations
• Finite State Machines – Mealy and Moore
• VHDL – Hardware Description Language
• Microprocessors and Microcontrollers
• C for Embedded Systems

ENGSCI211: Mathematical Modelling 2
This is a math paper common to all engineering specialisations and it builds on the concepts learnt in ENGSCI111 – I won’t go too in-depth for this one as it’s not really compsys-specific. But it was super enjoyable and make sure you pay extra close attention when learning about Laplace transforms because you’ll need that knowledge for ELECTENG202!

Although all the courses in this semester were theory based with lots of writing and calculations, it was all to build the knowledge we need for the big project papers in the upcoming semesters. That being said, we did have a small practical component to our ELECTENG and COMPSYS papers – the labs. My favourite COMPSYS201 lab was one where we used a micro-controller and some LEDs to write a program that can be used to measure the time a photo interrupter sensor is blocked. This was where we got to see where our electrical knowledge would come in handy when dealing with computer systems and it was a super memorable experience - I totally geeked out when everything started working in the end and was super proud to see how cool my specialisation is.

So, the first semester for me didn’t really start out as exciting as I thought it would be to begin studying in my chosen specialisation. It was a lot of electrical theory and during the semester, I had a hard time understanding what I was studying and figuring out where I would even need this knowledge or where this degree would actually take me. But towards the end of the semester, I could slowly see how all the pieces fit together and when the second semester came along, it all fell into place…more on that in a later post – stay tuned.

Salina 🌻