Week One: Heart & Soul
Computers are made of parts: The core being the CPU, the motherboard, RAM, Harddrive, Video card.
When purchasing a computer, the general overall choices:
Clone vs Name Brand
Core Components: CPU, HDD, MEM
Accessories
CDROM/R/W, DVD Player, FDD, Keyboard, Mouse, Sound Card, Modem, NIC, Video Card, Monitor
When advising a purchase:
Ask about level of user. Based on this, advise for entry, mid, advanced and possibly corporate
Advise on CPU, HDD, RAM & Peripherals
Make sure they understand the difference between a Flat Monitor & a Flat CRT (or at least make sure you do)
Basic Premise of how computers work
All computers start up through their power supply. This provides power to the motherboard which starts up a POST which looks to the CMOS (powered by a CMOS battery) and then the BIOS for all of the basic hardware (Motherboard, memory, hdd, video card, input devices). If everything is ok, the system will pass its hardware tests and start looking at operating system software.
Diagnosing Computer Issues
Connection Issues:
Is it plugged in? Is there power to the unit?
Are all of the internal parts plugged in? Remember the red/marked side of the cable usually goes towards the power plug of the device. The power plugs usually go in only one way.
The RAM needs to be seated into the socket.
The cards need to be seated into the motherboard
The power cables to the motherboard need to be plugged in – on AT boards, remember the two black lines go into the center…. On ATX boards, the power cable is one unit with the two black lines on the inside.
If a computer "loses" its time / date and other critical information – suspect the CMOS battery.
Basic Parts of the Motherboard and Computer
Memory Slot Sizes
30, 72, 168 pins
Memory Sizes:
| MB | Kilobytes | |
| 2 | 2,000 | |
| 4 | 4,000 | |
| 8 | 8,000 | |
| 16 | 16,000 | |
| 32 | 32,000 | |
| 64 | 64,000 | |
| 128 | 128,000 | |
| 256 | 256,000 | |
| 512 | 512,000 | |
| 1 Gigabyte | 1,000,000 | 1000 Megabytes |
| 1 Terrabyte | 1,000,000,000 | 100,000 Megabytes |
How much fits on a floppy drive? On a thumb drive? On a zip drive?
Card slots:
ISA, PCI
Video Slots:
AGP
Other parts to recognize:
Hard Disk Drive
Floppy Disk Drive
CMOS battery
A Modem Card
A NIC Card
Ports to recognize
Video
USB
Firewire
Parallel
Serial
PS/2
Concepts to Understand
HDD sizes versus Memory (RAM) Sizes
Vocabulary Everyone Should Know the Function Of:
CPU
RAM: DIMM / SIMM
Motherboard
CMOS
PCI / ISA Slots
Kilobyte Megabyte Gigabyte Terabyte
Last Update: 05/30/2005 02:20:49 PM.