mPegboard user's guide v0.1


Before continuing ensure that you have the following items:
1 Pegboard.
A box of pegs.
A number of long pieces of plastic with pegs on each end.

Orientation:
The pegboard is wider than it is high.
Place the pegboard on the desk in front of you ensuring that the cut slots run vertically.
You will notice that the board consists of 3 lots of 32 holes. Every 8 holes there is a line that devides the pegboard.
There are 3 rows of holes into which pegs can be placed.

The pegboard is designed to assist you with binary and hexadecimal calculations as well as base conversion.
Concentrate on the top row of holes; i.e. those that are furthest away from you.
Each hole represents a binary digit. The right-most hole represents 2^0 and the left-hand most hole represents 2^31.
The lines that are etched into the pegboard every 8 holes are designed to show you where byte boundaries occur.

If you place a peg into a hole; that represents a binary 1. A hole without a peg is worth zero.
For example: If the right hand 3 holes have peg, peg and blank; this represents the binary number 110 or decimal 6.

There are 3 rows of pegs. This allows you to do binary calculations on the pegboard. Place your 2 operands in the first 2 rows, apply your operator and place the result in the bottom row.
This will allow you to do binary addition, subtraction, and also logical operations such as and or or.

Also included with the pegboard are a set of long strips with pegs at the end. This is to allow you to fill up a whole byte boundary (i.e. 255) without having to put 8 pegs into the board.

The pegboard is especially useful when calculating network and broadcast addresses. Place your address in the top row; (converting it to binary first) and place your netmask in the second row. And the mask with the ip address and you will obtain the network address of the ip address and mask given in the top two rows.