LIS508 lecture 3: looking at a computer

Thomas Krichel

2002-10-06

Admin news

• Grades for the quizzes will be made available at

• http://wotan.liu.edu/home/krichel/lis508p02a/grades/secret.html

• where secret is your word, transliterated into all lowercase, example– seCret secret– SecrEt secret

Literature

• Peter Norton “New inside the PC” chapter 1 and 5

• Ruth Maran and Paul Whitehead “Teach yourself computers visually”, chapter 1 and 3

What is a PC

• The PC was first brought out by IBM in 1981– IBM published the design– Software to run it was bought from Microsoft– Microsoft had the right to have other

companies use the operating system.

• A PC is any computer that basically follows this tradition.

Basic parts of a PC

• Display do not open• Input no need to open

– Keyboard – Mouse etc

• System Unit may be opened– Logic system– Display system– Storage system– Input output system– Communication system

Opening the system unit

• Voltages used in the PC are 3 to 12 V

• Be aware of static electricity, touch first– Unpainted part of case– Power supply

• Keep power cable plugged in a grounded socket

• Never open sealed part of the power supply

Logic system I

• Motherboard – green plastic sheet – with traces and slots – usually complying to a standard called “plug

and play”

• Jumpers can set key features– Jumper wires stick out of the motherboard– Can be shortened with jumpers– Do not change unless you have to

The logic system II

• CMOS or flash memory– Powered by battery – holds the Basic Input Output System (BIOS)

• Central Processing Unit (CPU), recognizable through its fan

• Cache memory for CPU

• Main memory socket

• The Bus (see later)

BIOS

• Is the software that makes the components of the PC work together

• When the computer boots it tells you how to “enter setup”

• There you can make changes to the BIOS setting

• The way that you do this is not standardized– It usually is a simple menu.– Be careful

Usual things to set in the BIOS

• Set the hardware clock

• Set processor speed (silly)

• Tell the machine what disks you have

• Power management options

• Automatic wake up

• Boot sequence setting

The Bus

• Set of connections between devices in the system unit.

• In fact there are many buses• Types of bus

– Industry Standard Architecture ISA bus (16 bit)– Peripheral Component Interconnect PCI bus (32 bit)– Accelerated graphics port (AGP) bus, only for

graphics

Next week

• Using the keyboard

• Using the mouse

http://openlib.org/home/krichel

Thank you for your attention!