Computer Hardwares

Basic
- Inside The Box
Introduction to Computer Hardware
• Case • Keyboard/mouse
• Power switch • Network card
• Reset switch • Modem
• Hard drive • Sound card
• Floppy • Video card
• CD/DVD • RAM
• Zip drive • Motherboard
• Serial ports • Bus
• Parallel port • Fan
• USB port • Cables
 A computer is:
• An electronic machine that can be
programmed to accept data (input), and
process it into useful information
(output). Data is put in secondary
storage (storage) for safekeeping or later
use.
• The processing of input into output is
directed by the software, but performed
by the hardware.
Graphic Representation of Computer Components:

SOURCE: http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~weli/courses/bus181/notes/chap4.html
The basic system including keyboard, mouse and
monitor.
The case…
Front of the System Unit
• Drives are housed in drive bays
which are accessed at the front of
the case.
• Internal drives, such as the hard disk
drive, are installed in internal bays
that are not typically as accessible as
the external drives pictured here.
• System Unit cases come in a huge
array of types and styles, depending
upon hardware needs.
What is in the box?

Motherboard
ABIT KT7 RAID
 The System Unit
❖Structure:The System Unit
includes the central processing unit,
memory modules, expansion slots,
and electronic circuitry as well as
expansion cards that are all
attached to the motherboard; along
with disk drives, a fan or fans to
keep it cool, and the power supply.
❖Protection: The system case
protects the inside of the system
from physical damage and electrical
interference.
❖Cooling: The case provides
cooling system to the vital
components.
❖Status Display: contains lights or
LEDs that provide information inside
the box to the user.
❖All other devices (monitor,
keyboard, mouse, etc., are linked Sources: Tom’s Hardware site: http://www.tomshardware.com
either directly or indirectly into the
system unit.
and…
and…
 Power Supply
• A power supply is a transformer and voltage control device in a computer
that provides power to all the electronic components by converting them
into the low voltage DC supply.
• When computer is turned on, the power supply allows the converted
electricity to travel to other components inside the computer.
• Power supply provides protection against surge and spikes in the power,
which could damage vital components of the computer.
• Nowadays, PC power supply is capable of providing several different
voltages, at different strengths and manages additional signals for the
motherboard.
• The power supply plays an important role in the following areas:
❖ Stability
❖ Cooling
❖ Expandability
 The Motherboard and CPU
⧫ The motherboard is the main
circuit board of a
microcomputer. It contains the
central processing unit (CPU),
the Basic Input/Output System
(BIOS), CMOS, memory, mass
storage interfaces, serial and
parallel ports, expansion slots,
and all the controllers for
standard peripheral devices
like the keyboard, disk drive
and display screen.
 BIOS
• BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. It is the lowest-level software
in the computer; it comprises a of several routines and start up instruction
inside a ROM. This gives two advantages: firstly, the code and data in the
ROM BIOS need not be reloaded each time the computer is started,
secondly they cannot be corrupted by any application that are accidentally
written into wrong part of memory

• The first part runs as soon as the machine is switched on. It inspects the
computer to determine what hardware is fitted and then conducts simple
test (power-on self test) for normal functionality. If all the tests are passed,
the ROM then determines the drive to boot the machine.
• Most PCs have the BIOS set to check for the presence of an OS in the
primary hard disk. Once the machine is booted, the BIOS serves a different
purpose by presenting DOS with a standardize API for the PC
 CMOS
• Motherboard includes a separate block of memory made up of very low
power consumption called CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Silicon)
chip. This chip is kept alive by a battery even when the PCs power is off.
• The function of CMOS chip is to store basic information about the PCs
configuration number and type of hard and floppy drives, memory
capacity etc.
• The other important data which is kept in CMOS memory, is system time
and date. The clock, CMOS chip and batteries are usually all integrated in a
single chip
Typical parts of a motherboard.

ABIT SE6
 Inside the Processor
❖The CPU has 2 fundamental sections:
the Control Unit, and the Arithmetic
Logic Unit. These work together to
perform processing operations.
❖Other components of the CPU include
the Registers and the System Clock.
❖ A processor’s clock speed is
measured in Megahertz (MHz) and
Gigahertz (GHz). Clock speed is the
speed at which a processor executes
instructions. A Pentium IV typically has
a clock speed of 1.4 GHz.

Further research: Buses,

System Bus, Expansion Bus
 Registers
• Registers are special purpose, high-speed temporary memory
units.
• Temporary storage areas for holding various types of information
such as data, instructions, addresses and the intermediate results
of calculations.
• Registers hold information that the CPU is currently working on.
• Registers can be thought of as the CPU’s working memory, a
special additional storage location that offers the advantage of
speed.
• Registers work under the direction of the control unit to accept,
hold, and transfer instructions or data.
 System Bus

• A bus is a connections between two or more components/devices,

which are designed to transfer several/all bits of a word from a specific
source to destination.
• A bus consists of multiple paths, which are also termed as lines; each
line capable of transferring one bit at a time.
• In addition some other lines are needed for controlling this transfer.
• A bus can be unidirectional or bi-directional.
• In a shared bus, only one source can transmit data at one time while
one or more than one can receive that data.
• A bus that connects to all three components (CPU, memory, I/O
components) is called a system bus
 System Bus (Cont.)
System Bus
Shared Bus

CPU Memory I/O

 System Bus (Cont.)
• Data Line: Data line provides a path for moving data between
system modules. Data lines are collectively known as data bus. Normally a
data bus consists of 8, 16 and 32 bits separate lines. The number of lines
present in data bus is called the width of data bus. Data bus width limits
the maximum number of bits, which can be transferred simultaneously
between two modules. The width of data bus helps in determining the
overall performance of a computer system

• Address Line: Address lines are used to designate the source of

data for data bus. For reading or writing any information on the memory
CPU needs to specify the address of a particular location. The width of
address specify the maximum possible memory supported by a system.
 System Bus (Cont.)
• Control Line: Control lines are used to control the access to data
and address bus; this is required because bus is a shared medium. The
control lines are collectively called control bus. These lines are used for
transmission of commands and timing signals between the system
modules.
• Timing signal indicates whether data and address information is valid or
not whereas command signal specify which operations are to be
performormed.
 Random Access Memory (RAM)
• RAM is Primary Storage.
• Serves as computer’s workspace, storing all or part of the
program that is being executed, as well as data being used
by the program.
• RAM stores the operating system programs that manage
the operation of the computer.
• RAM is Volatile storage:
– Power goes, data goes!
• More memory = larger workspace
– Large programs = large number of instructions
– Measured in Bytes (KB, MB, GB, etc.)
• Data/instructions are copied into memory as needed.
– Not enough memory or corruption of data/instructions
in memory can cause crash.
 More About RAM:
• RAM provides instructions and data to the CPU. These instructions/data are coded in bytes.
Each byte is placed in a precise location in memory, called an address. To access data or
instructions in memory, the computer references the addresses containing the bytes.
• The amount of memory available is therefore measured in bytes:

Approx. Pages
Name Abbreviation Approx. # of Bytes Exact # of Bytes
of Text
Byte B One 1 One character
Kilobyte KB (or K) One thousand 1,024 One-half page
Megabyte MB One million 1,048,576 500 pages

Gigabyte GB One billion 1,073,741,824 500,000 pages

500,000,000
Terabyte TB One trillion 1,099,511,627,776
pages
 Cache Memory
• The cache is very high speed, expensive piece of memory, which is used to
speed up the memory retrieval process.
• Due to its high cost, CPU comes with a relatively small amount of cache
compared with the main memory.
• Without the cache memory, everytime the CPU requests for data, it would
send a request to the main memory which would then be sent back across
the system bus to the CPU.
• The idea of introducing cache is that this extremely fast memory would
store data that is frequently accessed and if possible, the data that is
around it.
• The computer uses logic to determine which data is the most frequently
accessed and keeps them in the cache.
• A cache is a piece of very fast memory, made from high-speed static RAM
that reduces the access time of the data.
Ports
• Ports are sockets that allow you to
plug in device connectors to access
the common electrical bus on the
motherboard.
• Ports are usually found on the back
of the system unit, but newer styles
also have some of them
conveniently located on the front.
• Ports allow specific types of
connectors (which partly reflects
changing technology as well as
various kinds of technology).
Cabling
Types of Ports
• Serial ports transmit data one bit at a
time, like the picture on the left
illustrates.
• Parallel ports transmit more than one
byte at a time.
• These types of port designs are based on
whether or not fast data transmission
rates are required by the device or not.
• Most computers come with basic types
of ports (serial, parallel, PS/2 and USB);
and expansion cards allow you to expand
the available types needed by specific
devices.

Other types to look up and read about:

SCSI, USB, Fire Wire, and MIDI.
 More about Ports
• PS/2 Port: It is a standard serial port connector used to plug computer mouse
and keyboard. It contains 6-pins in small and round shape socket
• SCSI Port: These ports are used to transmit data up to seven devices in a “daisy
chain” fashion and at a speed faster than serial and parallel ports (32-bits at a
time). In daisy chain several devices are connected in series to each other, so that
data for the seventh device need to go through the entire six devices first. Devices
which can be connected to SCSI ports are hard-disk drives and network adapters.
• USB Port: USB (Universal Serial Bus) port is a plug-and-play hardware interface
for connecting peripherals such as keyboard, mouse scanner, printer and modem.
It supports a maximum bandwidth of 12 MB/sec and has the capability to connect
up to 127 devices. These ports are replacement of serial and parallel ports
Different Types of Connectors
• Understanding the differences
among connector types is
useful and important, as the
cable required to attach a
device to your computer is
specific to its connector, not to
mention the port on the
computer.

Fire wire connectors and port.

(Also called IEEE 1394)
 •Expansion Cards plug into the expansion

Expansion Cards slots found on the motherboard.

Convenient way to add extra ports or
expand the computer’s capabilities.

Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)

Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)
 Expansion Slots and Cards
• Expansion slots are sockets to provide direct connections to the common
electrical bus, allowing you to insert a circuit board into the motherboard.
• Typical Expansion Cards:
– Video Cards: also called display adapter, is used for enhancing graphics images that
are seen on the computer’s monitor. The card converts images created in the
computer to the electronic signals required by the monitor.
– Sound Cards: An expansion card that allows the computer to output sound through
the connected speakers, to record sound and to manipulate sounds stored on the
computer.
– Modem Cards: allows two computers to communicate over phone line. It converts
digital data into analog signal, transmit over the telephone lines and at the same
time converts incoming analog signals back to digital signals for the receiving
computer.
– Network Interface Cards (NIC): used to connect a computer with the other
computers on the network.
• Laptops and portable computers typically have PC Cards – thin credit-card
sized devices used to add memory, disk drives, etc.
Non-Volatile Storage Devices
• Disk drives
– Internal & External
– Hard drives
– Removable disk drives
• Floppy disks (1.4 MB)
• ZIP disks (100/250 MB)
• CD-ROM (700MB), DVD-ROM (~5GB/side)
– read only (-ROM), write once (-R), re-writeable (-
RW)
• Combination drive
– CD-RW/DVD-ROM, CD-RW/DVD-R

• Many other forms

• Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, CompactFlash,
and SmartMedia