Bulletin Number One 1987

Department of Computer Science Before the establishment of the Department of Com­ puter Science at United College in 1973-74 ， the University had been offering computer courses on electronic data processing, systems analysis, and programming since 1968. The Department, set up to meet the society's increasing need for trained com­ puter personnel, was the first of its kind in the local tertiary educational institutions. In the first five years, only aminor programme was offered. Students were required to take the core courses in the first two years and select in the third and fourth years, courses in one of the three special izations — Pure Computer Science, Information Systems and Numerical Methods. The major pro gramme was introduced in 1978 and the curriculum was carefully planned after consulting other Common wealth universities, the Curriculum Recommendations of the Association for Computer Machinery, and the external examiners. In 1984, the curriculum was revised in the light of the curricular recommendations o f several computer professional bodies, such as the British Computer Society, the Association for Com puting Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Apart from the major and minor programmes, the Department also offers service courses at the first- and second-year level. At the postgraduate level, an MPhil programme in Com puter Science was introduced in 1982. In the academic year 1985-86, the student enrolment of the Department was as follows: MPhil programme: 7 Undergraduate programme: Major: 198 Minor: 413 Elective: 1200 Professional Recognition In November 1983, the British Computer Society granted exemption from both Part I and II of the Society Examination to Computer Science majors who have graduated with a BSc degree with honours and at least grade C in the final-year project. Graduates with pass degrees are given exemption only from Part I. This accreditation enables eligible gradu­ ates who have been exempted from the Society Examination to become Associate Members of the Society (AMBCS) after having at least one-year practical experience in the use and application of computers. This university is the first institution out side the United Kingdom ever to be accredited by the Society. In March 1985, the British Computer Society further decided to give exemption from Part I of the Society Examination to graduates who have minored in Computer Science and passed a number of selected Computer Science courses and have successfully com pleted at least fifty hours of relevant programming projects. Equipment Installation Three laboratories have been established since 1978 in the Department of Computer Science for teaching and research purposes: (1) The Computing Laboratory A VAX-11/780 system with 4.0 MB main stor age, 640 MB disk storage was installed in 1982. The operating system in use is VMS with PASCAL, FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/I, BLISS, BASIC, SPITBOL, LISP, Micro-concurrent PASCAL, ADA compilers, DBMS package and Decnet. A VAX-11/730 system with 2.0 MB main storage, 130 MB disk storage was installed in 1985. The operating system is VMS with Decnet. (2) The Microprocessor and Micro-computer Laboratory A Zilog Z-8000 system with 512 KB main storage, forty-four MB disk storage was installed in 1982. The operating system in use is ZEUS (UNIX). In addition, there are micro-computer systems: nine INTEL 86/310 systems, Seiko 9500 ， Exormac 68000, Mostek Z-80, Exorset 6809, and Exorcisor 6800. These systems are used for graphics, microprocessor, computer architecture courses and research work. (3) The Digital and Logic System Laboratory It is equipped with the basic measuring instru­ ment patch boards and various integrated circuit boards. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 15