"H" is for "Hardware"
or
Warning: some quantum physics is discussed
The teacher's doing theory again. Talking about the insides of computers.
Megawhat? What's a bus doing in a computer? If he mentions floppies again,
I'm going to complain to the principal...
If some of the thoughts above seem familiar to you, some
of the following may help.
For details on how this stuff works, visit How
Stuff Works - an excellent resource!
What other things do you need to know? Let me know.
Components of information systems
Information systems are made up of these components:
- people
- data
- equipment (hardware and software)
- procedures (how things are done)
None is more important than the others, even though more time and money may be spent on some system components than others. Having a beautiful computer system with no people to operate it, no data to work with, and no organised system of who-does-what-and-how is pointless. All components must be present, synchronised and efficient if the system is to be useful.
This section of the site deals mainly with hardware components.
Hardware
Hardware is any part of a computer system that you can touch, pick up, drop, or kick. Software is invisible - software is programs - but it must be stored on hardware (disks, memory chips, tape etc).
Pointing
devices - mice, joysticks, trackballs etc
Display
technology - monitors, video cards etc
Printing
devices - laser, inkjet, dot matrix, thermal
Scanners
- and OCR
CPUs
(Central Processing Units)
Hard
Disk Drives and other storage
Motherboards
and slots, power supplies, memory, etc
Computer
numbers - from bit to ZETTABYTE
Communication
technologies - modems, hubs/switches, wireless networking etc
Networking
technologies and topologies
Ports
- parallel, serial, USB, mouse, keyboard, monitor, PC Card
Operating System: An operating system (such as Windows 98, ME, XP) and Linux is the software that controls the overall operation of a PC. It allocates memory to programs, controls disk access, manages hardware, allows multiple programs to run at the same time ("multitasking"), controls security (e.g. user logins).
Note that when controlling devices, the operating system rarely directly "talks" to the device. Usually, the operating system issues orders to a device driver which then translates the operating system's command into a form the device can understand.
Most devices, such as hard disks, video cards, network cards, etc. have their own CPUs, so often the operating system merely needs to tell the device what needs to be done, and the device's own CPU will take over the work from then on. Early "dumb" devices needed to be driven step by step by the computer's CPU, so the CPU was often bogged down with a lot of extra work.
Imagine the CEO of a multinational company having to dispense pens to thousands of workers, and fix the photocopier when it got jammed. That was what the CPUs of older PCs had to do. Nowadays, the CPU is like a general manager of a company, and it issues commands to "middle manager" chips that manage the details of the work to be done.
