Computer Repair - A Complete Illustrated Guide To Pc Hardware

639 Pages·2016·6.83 MB·English

by  Karbo Michael

A complete illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware
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● Start studying the design
of a PC motherboard.
● Learn about harddisks
and other drives.
● Learn about the PC I/O
system.
● Learn about the PC video Pentium 4 and AthlonXP.
system.
More than 50 photos of old
Sitemap cars free to download!
See our guestbook and add The MP3 article is re-written.
your comment.
Editing photos with Photoshop
Cleaning Windows Me for
temporary files ...
All modules 7 re-written
Copyright (c) 1996 - 2002 Michael B. Karbo. WWW.KARBOSGUIDE.COM.
http://www.karbosguide.com/guides/start.htm7/27/2004 4:04:12 AM
A complete illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware

About Michael Karbo 1. About PC data 4. Drives and other
1a. About data storage
NEW: German 1b. Character tables 4a. Drives
4b. Hard disks
version.
Privacy politic 2. The PC system board 4c. Optic storage media
2a. Introduction 4d. ZIP etc.
Software Guides
2b. Boot process, system 4e. Tape streamers
Dictionary
bus
Photo Gallery
2c. I/O buses 5. Expansion cards
Search
and interfaces
2d. Chip sets
5a. Adapters
2e. On RAM
5b. EIDE, Ultra DMA,
AGP
3. About CPUs
3a. An intro to CPUs 5c. SCSI, FireWire, USB
3b. CPU improvements
6. OSs and file
3c. 5th gener. CPUs
systems
3d. Cooling and overclocking
6a. File systems
3e. 6th gener. CPUs
6b. Windows 95
6c. BIOS, OS, hardware
6d. The Windows 98
page
7. Graphics and sound
7a. Display basics
7b. Graphics cards
7c. About sound cards
7d. Digital music MP3,
MOD etc.
Main page
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.
KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. ● Next page
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About data
Our PCs are data processors. The PC's function is simple: to process data, and
the processing is done electronically inside the CPU and between the other
components. That sounds simple, but what is data, and how is it processed
electronically in a PC? That is the subject of these pages.

Analog data
The signals, which we send each other to communicate, is data. Our daily data have many forms:
sound, letters, numbers, and other characters (handwritten or printed), photos, graphics, film. All this
data is in its nature analog, which means that it varies in type. In this form, the data-signals are
unusable in a PC. The PC can only process concise, simple data formats. Such data can be processed
very effectively.
Digital data
The PC is an electric unit. Therefore, it can only deal with data, which are associated with electricity.
That is accomplished using electric switches, which are either off or on. You can compare with regular
household switches. If the switch is off, the PC reads numeral 0. If it is on, it is read as numeral one.
See the illustration below:
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.

With our electric switches, we can write 0 or 1. We can now start our data processing!
The PC is filled with these switches (in the form of transistors). There are literally millions of those in the
electronic components. Each represents either a 0 or a 1, so we can process data with millions of 0s and
1s.
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Bits
[top]
Each 0 or 1 is called a bit. Bit is an abbreviation of the expression BInary digiT. It is called binary, since
it is derived from the binary number system:
0 1 bit
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.
1 1 bit
0110 4 bit
01101011 8 bit
The binary number system
[top]
The binary number system is made up of digits, just like our common decimal system (10 digit system).
But, while the decimal system uses digits 0 through 9, the binary system only uses digits 0 and 1.
If you are interested in understanding the binary number system, then here is a brief course. See if you
can follow the system. See how numbers are constructed in the binary system, using only 0s and 1s:
Numbers, as known in the Same numbers in binary
decimal-system system
0 0
1 1
2 10
3 11
4 100
5 101
6 110
7 111
8 1000
Digital data
[top]
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.
We have seen that the PC appears capable of handling data, if it can receive them as 0s and 1s. This
data format is called digital. If we can translate our daily data from their analog format to digital format,
they will appear as chains of 0s and 1s, then the PC can handle them.
So, we must be able to digitize our data. Pour text, sounds, and pictures into a funnel, from where they
emerge as 0s and 1s:

Let us see how this can be accomplished.
● Next page
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Learn more [top]
Read more about the boot process and system bus in Module 2b
Read more about I/O buses in module 2c
Read more about the motherboard chip set in module 2d
Read more about RAM in module 2e
Read about EIDE in module 5b
[Main page] [Contact] [Karbo's Dictionary] [The Software Guides]
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.
Copyright (c) 1996-2001 by Michael B. Karbo. www.karbosguide.com.
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.
KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a2.
About Bytes
Contents: ● Ne
xt page
● Previous page
● Introduction
● ASCII
● About text and code
● Data in files

Introduction
The most basic data processing is word processing. Let us use that as an example. When we
do word processing, we work at a keyboard similar to a typewriter. There are 101 keys,
where we find the entire alphabet A, B, C, etc. We also find the digits from 0 to 9 and all the
other characters we need:,.-;():_?!"#*%&etc..
All these characters must be digitized. They must be expressed in 0s and 1s. Bits are
organized in groups of 8. A group of 8 bits is called a byte.
8 bits = 1 byte, that is the system. Then, what can we do with bytes? First, let us see how
many different bytes we can construct. A byte is an 8 digit number. We link 0s and 1s in a
pattern. How many different ones can we make? Here is one: 01110101, and here is
another: 10010101.
We can calculate that you can make 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 different patterns, since
each of the 8 bits can have 2 values.
● 28 (two in the power of eight) is 256. Then there are 256 different bytes!
Now we assign a byte to each letter and other characters. And since we have 256 patterns to
choose from, there is plenty of room for all. Here you see some examples of the
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KarbosGuide.com. Module 1a. About data.
"translation:"
Character Bit pattern Byte Character Bit pattern Byte
number number
A 01000001 65 ¼ 10111100 188
B 01000010 66 . 00101110 46
C 01000011 67 : 00111010 58
a 01100001 97 $ 00100100 36
b 01100010 98 \ 01011100 92
o 01101111 111 ~ 01111110 126
p 01110000 112 1 00110001 49
q 01110001 113 2 00110010 50
r 01110010 114 9 00111001 57
x 01111000 120 © 10101001 169
y 01111001 121 > 00111110 62
z 01111010 122 ‰ 10001001 137
When you write the word "summer", you write 6 letters. If the computer has to process that
word, it will be digitized to 6 bytes. In other words, the word summer occupies 6 bytes in the
PC RAM, when you type it, and 6 bytes on the hard disk, if you save it.
ASCII
[top]
ASCII means American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is an industry
standard, which assigns letters, numbers, and other characters within the 256 slots available
in the 8 bit code.
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