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Computer Basics

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19 views

Computer Basics

Uploaded by

shanthini
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Computer Basics

© Copyright 2003 Janna B. Gallaher


The Personal Computer
t The personal computer was made possible by the invention of
solid state electronics and specifically the integrated circuit.
t The first microprocessors were made in the late 1960’s and were
very simple in structure
PC Architecture
Sound Motherboard Power On
Reset

Monitor Video CPU


Ram
BIOS

Video Cache DRAM


Processor
Memory 64mB – 1GB

Local Bus 64-bit data, 32-bit address, 133 mhz

Keyboard Bridge Bridge LAN Bridge

EISA Bus Ethernet PCI Bus

CD ROM USB
Floppy Hard
Mouse Disk Disk
PC Motherboard
Parallel and Serial Ports
t Gigybyte GA-71XE motherboard
Keyboard and
Mouse connectors

Microprocessor
ISA Expansion
Slots
AGP Video
Connector

BIOS RAM Memory Slots

Floppy Disk Connector


PCI Expansion
Slots Battery
Hard Disk Drive Connectors
PC Motherboard Block Diagram
t Gigabyte GA-72XE motherboard block diagram (from the owner’s
manual)
The Microprocessor
t Block diagram of an Intel 8086 microprocessor

Interrupt Control Serial I/O Control

8-bit Internal Data Bus


Register Array
Accumulator B C
Arithmetic Logic Reg Reg
Temp. Register
Unit (ALU)
D E
Flag Flip-flops
Reg Reg
H L
Instruction
Timing and Decoder and Instruction Reg Reg
Control Machine Cycle Register
Stack Pointer
Encoding Address
Prog. Counter Data
Address Buffer Inc/Dec Address Buffer
The Microprocessor (continued)
t Block
diagram of the Intel Itanium processor which is one of the
newer microprocessors available

Diagram courtesy Intel Corp


Software
t There are 3 levels of software required to do something on a PC
t The BIOS
t The Operating System
t Applications RAM
Memory Programs Stored on Disk

Application: Word Processor


BIOS
Used during Operating Application: Photo Editor
boot process System
Manages computer
operation
Application: Database

Application: HTML Editor


Software
t BIOS
t Lowest level program on the PC
t BIOS is an acronym for: Basic Input/Output System

t It is a program that is stored in Read-Only-Memory on the motherboard

t It is a program that is unique to each motherboard model and provides disk


drive configuration information for the operating system along with the
system time, security access, and other low-level settings.
t The BIOS is executed during the boot process

BIOS Chip
The Operating System Software
t Operating System
t The operating system is the software that has the job of managing all of the
tasks that a computer is asked to do
t It performs file management and it writes to and reads from the disk

t It loads and executes application programs

t Manages how to use all of the peripheral devices

t Receives commands from the keyboard and outputs data to the monitor

t Two popular operating systems for the PC are Windows and Linux
although there are others
Application Programs
t Applications are programs that you run to
perform tasks on the computer
t Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Access, Visual
Studio, MathCad, AutoCad, Photoshop, and
Oracle are just a few of thousands of programs
t These programs must be written using a
programming language that will convert an idea
into instructions that a computer can execute
Programming Languages
t Programming languages allow us to
convert ideas into computer code
t The computer can only understand
sequences of 1’s and 0’s and humans
are used to conversing in English or
some other language
t A programming language provides the
means of converting English sentences
into machine code
t There are many programming languages
and each one has its advantages and
disadvantages
t One good general purpose programming
language is C
Writing Programs
t Writing programs involves knowing several things:
t The application – what it is that you want to do on the computer
t The operating system – how does the program interface with the computer

t The language syntax – what it takes to write programs

t A program development environment – a compiler and debugger or other


program development tools
t Other tools such as mathematics, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence
algorithms, signal processing techniques, etc.
t Engineering the solution must be done first before any code is
written

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