Basic Computing Study Guide.ppt

1、Basic Computing Study Guide7 major components of a computer7 major components of a computer1. Power Supply 2. Motherboard 3. CPU4. Hard drive 5. RAM 6. CD/DVD Drive Optical Drive 7. Video CardPower Supplies The power supply converts electricity into a usable form for all components in the computer.

2、The CPU is made up of millions of on/off switches. Without electricity there can be no switches inside the computer.Motherboard The motherboards main job is to hold the main processor chip The motherboard ties everything together. It allows every component of the computer to function together. Items

3、 located on the motherboard BIOS: Basic Input/Output System located on the motherboard PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect typical slot where expansion cards are inserted AGP: Accelerated Graphics Port High End Monitor slot IDE: Integrated Drive Electronics -Typical connection for hard drives and

4、 optical drives USB: Universal Serial Port Port where many different peripherial devices can be connected to the motherboard (computer) IEEE 1394: Firewire High speed connection. Used mainly for Video and Audio transferring RAM: Random Access Memory Where programs that are running on the computer ar

5、e stored BonusRAID: redundant array of independent disksBIOS The primary function of the BIOS is to identify and initialize system component hardware (such as the video display card, hard disk, and floppy disk) and some other hardware devices.Hard drives Hard disks give computers the ability to reme

6、mber things when the power goes out. A typical computer can have more than one hard drive. On a hard disk you can move to any point on the surface of the disk almost instantly. A hard disk spins at up to 3,000 inches per second.Hard Drive Capacity IDE hard drives (typical hard drive you might have i

7、n your home computer) have the ability to load 133MB/s Newer Hard drives can transfer data over twice as fast On a hard disk you can move to any point on the surface of the disk almost instantly. A hard disk spins at up to 3,000” per second.CD/DVD Optical Drive Data on CD/DVDs are stable and are not

8、 easily erased. CDs hold roughly 700MB of data DVDs hold 4.3 GBRAM A data storage device that allows data to be accessed in any order. The word random thus refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned in a constant time regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is relate

9、d to the previous piece of dataVideo Card PC hardware component whose function is to generate and output images to a display. It operates on similar principles as a sound card or other peripheral devices. Some video cards offer added functions, such as video capture, TV tuner adapter, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding or even FireWire, mouse, light pen, joystick connectors, or even the ability to connect multiple monitors.CPU Central Processing Unit The CPU executes a sequence of stored instructions called a program. The program is represented by a series of numb