How Computers Work

How Computers Work

How Computers Work

Introduction | Hardware Useless Without Software | Hardware Devices | Types of Motherboards | The CPU and the Chip Set | IO Devices | Expansion Slots and Ports | Computer Video | Conclusion Introduction Welcome to the Week 1 Lecture! The lectures are a supplement to the assigned readings--not a replacement. I recommend that you read the lecture first and then the assigned reading. This week's lecture will introduce you to the concept of hardware and software, and it will show why they need each other to operate. The assigned readings discuss how the hardware communicates with the main components of the PC and the types of resources required by each device to accomplish the tasks of communicating. In the remaining sections of the lecture, we will briefly identify different hardware components and discuss why we use them. Hardware Useless Without Software In the computer world, the word hardware is anything that can literally be touched like the disk drive, monitor, CPU, mouse, and keyboard. Software is the set of programs that control the hardware. Software works with hardware to perform four basic functions: receive information, process the information, store the information, and output results. The hardware works by using a system of electrical states or signals. These signals are comprised of two states: on or off. There is either an electrical charge or there is not. The binary number system is used to represent these two states of on or off. The binary number system is composed of a 0 and 1. The 0 is used to represent the off state, and the 1 is used to represent the on state. Early programmers had a lot of leeway in naming conventions, and because a 0 or 1 represented a bit of information, it became called a bit. The bits are grouped together in groups of eight. Since this was more than a bit of information, programmers named it a byte (bite). At one time, a half of a byte was in use, which of course was called a...