Computer hardware
A computer system consists of two major elements: hardware and software. Computer hardware is the collection of all the parts you can physically touch. Computer software, on the other hand, is not something you can touch. Software is a set of instructions for a computer to perform specific operations. You need both hardware and software for a computer system to work.
Some hardware components are easy to recognize, such as the computer case, keyboard, and monitor. However, there are many different types of hardware components. In this lesson, you will learn how to recognize the different components and what they do.
PC data
PC system board
CPU
Drives and other storage media
Expansion cards and interfaces
Operating and file systems
Video system
- Introduction to the PC
- PC construction
- History of the PC
- Data exchange - the mainboard
- POST and CMOS
- The Setup program
- BIOS programs and ATX
- The boot process
- The data flow on the system board
- Introduction to the PC busses
- The system bus
- 66 MHz and 100 MHz bus
- Introduction to the I/O busses
- Technical and historical background for the I/O busses
- The ISA bus
- MCA, EISA and VLB
- The PCI bus
- Chip set
- Triton
- Intel TX chip set - AGP and Ultra DMA
- Chip sets for Pentium Pro and Pentium II
- RAM
- SIMM modules
- DIMM modules
- PC100 RAM and Rambus RDRAM
- Motherboard and Power Supply
- Introduction to CPU
- 8086 compatible instructions
- CISC and RISC instructions and their handling
- Clock frequency
- Cache RAM
- CPU – areas of development
- The CPU speed measurement
- CPU changes historical review
- Pentium
- Pentium MMX
- Cyrix 6X86
- AMD
- Cyrix 6X86MX
- Pentium Pro
- Pentium II
- CPU sockets and chip sets
- Clocking
- Over-clocking
- CPU that support over clocking
- Introduction to I/O
- The internal I/O ports
- Adapters
- Modular PC design
- IRQ
- DMA
- Bus mastering
- I/O addresses
- PC Card
- EIDE
- Transfer speeds and protocols
- Ultra DMA
- Advanced Graphics Port
- Small Computer System Interface
- SCSI is intelligent
- Advantages of SCSI
- Universal or Useless Serial Bus
- IEEE 1394 FireWire