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Summary of Unit One

Computer knowledge is important. Because to be successful in today’s world, it is crucial to have knowledge and understanding of computers and their uses. In today’s working environment it essential to have the Literacy in computers, with the new world of technology there are more jobs Available.

What’s a Computer? A computer is an electronic machine that operates under the control of instructionsstored in it’s own memory that can accept data input, process and produce output results. And store results in which are organized, meaningful for future use. Uses of the computer are now all around the world and with it new companies were formed, new knowledge to learn and with that new and good paying jobs.

Once the computer came along in less than a decade, many programs were written and uses were very Expandable. Between 1986 and 1996 total state and Federal government spent 9.4% more each year on computers, Industries in the United States spent 22% more the same time. With rapid technological changes as will as social innovation and reorganization, a new digital economy is emerging. And has brought tools for thought, tools for the sector of economy by amplifying it to brainpower.

Summary of Unit Two

The motherboard is, in many ways, the most important component in your computer not the processor, even though the processor gets much more attention. If the processor is the brain of the computer, then the motherboard and its major components the chipset, BIOS, cache. Are the major systems, that this brain uses to control the rest of the computer. Having a good understanding of how the motherboard and its contained subsystems works is probably the most critical part of getting a good understanding of how PCs work in general.

CPU and other crucial chips on the motherboard communicate via the bus, everything off the motherboard is peripheral including keyboard, disks, etc. Peripheral devices reach the system bus by plugging into a bus slot Often it is a device controller that plugs into the bus rather than the device itself.

Summary of Unit Three

Microsoft quick history review and basic windows operating systems, Windows began in 1981, with help of Bill Gates. Microsoft and IBM succeeded in the way businesses were run and work was done, Windows operating system worked like you think, except we all have a different way of thinking. Thankfully windows can be customized in many different ways. The evolution of the PC have changed from working with 5 MHZ, which was pretty slow and couldn’t handle any kind of graphics, just letter and numbers on the screen.

Getting to know windows a little more than you already do, and may know already. You go to looking back to when windows was created back in 1981. And that Command Prompt was the most used and still used to this day. How much easier we have it compared to back in the days were it would be harder than we have it now, with multi-tasking and cut, copy, and paste. Windows 95 ability to run 32 bit application on the 32-bit processor, then shortly after that came Windows 98. Which added more features and fixed a lot of fundamental problems, not long after came came Windows 2000. Were we first? encountered the security system and etc.

Summary of Unit Four

Being able to work with Windows, Desktop and file system. I learned the process of opening and configuring in Windows Explorer and what file used and how to display them. How to sort files and folders, how to move objects in the window explorer. To what Properties was and what advantage you to know, and how it used. knowing how to use the search function and many different ways of searching for files and folders.

What file extensions are and how they are used and displayed, customizing and using the taskbar. Basic system management, disk maintance. Knowing the goal as a computer user would be to plug any device into the computer and have to work. To installing hardware and running it as well as Software. Knowing what viruses are and how they work and are caught and prevented.

Summary of Unit Five

Learning the serious of operating systems of Windows 2000, for it is not a single operating system and networking products. Here are a is one of a few I will explain Windows 2000 Professional is a solid and reliable operating system, it is the desktop of operating systems for the business of all sizes. From there Windows 2000 Professional will than connect to.

Windows 2000 Server, which provided basic server function for net works, being that it is small it is extremely powerful, using systems containing four CPU’S and up to 4 GB of RAM. Next would be Windows 2000 Advanced server with increased scalability and system availability, and was designed for servers used in large enterprises network, because it can utilize a system containing up to eight CPU’S and 64 GB of RAM.

Windows XP which is identical to NT, except for a few utilities and administration tools, that came in the home basic version. Which are stable, crash resistant, fast and powerful, And the XP Professional which is the same. But with same additions specific to business users.

Summary of Unit Six

Learned the Networking system of a peer-to-peer networking, which can be referred to a work group. In which it would allow all the computers to interact with each other and be able to share resources, And how having a work group you run the risk of not one, but all the computer systems to catch a viruses. Because there all connected, and that is where an Administrator would come in and administer everything that can and can not be done. Privileges are given and taken.

Next would be the Client-Server set network. This requires that one computer the server, the one that is dedicated to acting as the central repository of the account and login information, that usually file the application. Moving on to Windows 2000 and how this program contains security and starts with a user account that this is programmed that when started it automatically installs a the Administrator and guest accounts. As where the administrator accounts is the only account that has full power of the computer and the guest users.

There are two good reasons to do your day-to-day work as a regular user, instead of and administrator. First would be placing preventions on yourself would prevent viruses, which would make it a little harder for hackers to get into your account, since you gave yourself restrictions. Second would be it would also keep you from making inadvertent configurations. Knowing what a domain account is to is a very powerful, which you can do the controlling of the computer to giving access to a local computer and to simply allowing access to files and server. Profiles is another way of using the system it can be uses with multiple users as it can be set up on the same computer same system just different profile, though the accounts security is set up properly to were as none of the users can see each others files and folders, because of the security addition this is the possible magic of a profile.

The need of Security is obviously the key feature of windows, and is very well needed for a couple reasons being. Well the number one is a virus that comes along with the access to E-mail accounts, browsing the Web, in which security becomes a real big issue. As to where hackers can log right on to your system just being on the Internet, and sending and receiving e-mails is an easy target. And unfortunately as many times as they make software to fix Security the hole missing, a Hacker will keep looking until they find another.

Summary of Unit Seven

Floppy Druve: The floppy disk is perhaps the only computer component thats has retained it's orignal technology from 8088 to the present. IBM developed the first disk drive around 1972. These drives used 8 inch floppy disk, The 5 1/4 floppies that were common on the early PC'S came laer shortly by todays 3 1/2 inch format. Floppy Disk Drive Basics, A floppy disk is made of a flexible plastic disk, coated with a magnatic meterail. As data may lost or damaged it is a good Idea to teo copies of any data file that you originally create. Here are several physical sizes.

5 1/4" 160 KB Single-Sided-Density. The original, these are obsolete and never seen today.

5 1/4" 360 KB Double-Sided Single-Density. These were standard on the 8088, but obsolete today.

5 1/4" 720 KB Double-Sided Double-Density. These never really caught on, you are unlikely to see one.

5 1/4" 1.2 MB Double-sided High-Density. This is the original 3 1/2" drive, found in many 286 PCs.

3 1/2" 1.44 MB Double-Sided Double-Dentsity. The standard, they can read and write on 720 K DISKS,too.

3 1/2" 2.88 MB Dual-Sided Quad. Not very common. Today all floopy drives are connected to the motherboard using a standard 34-conductor floppy interface cable.

Installation: Though you are unlikely to ever install a floppy drive as an upgrade, more likely you will replace it, if it's a bad drive. But it replacing it requires the same eaxact replacement . There are three steps that would be processed.

1. Physically install the drive.

2.Connect the cables.'

3.configure the drives

Replacing the drive is easy, you simply put the new one in exactly like the old one. The drive will have side-mount screws that match holes in the chassis. The biggest problem that you may encounter is installing special brackets to accommodate for ohysical differences in size between the 3 1/2 inch drive if it is installed inot a universal bay that will also hold a CD-ROM drive.

Configurations of a floppy drives is also easy. You need to know only two things. First, if you have only one drive, it must be enables in the BIOS setup. Change the appropriate settings, aking sure that you choose both the drive and diskette. size that match your drive that you have installed.

Mainting Floppy Drives: With little maintenace they could be problem free. Failures come from few sources, They can be mechanical abuse, for example, When an operator forces a disk in backwards or inserts one with a damaged dust cover the metal or plastic sliding door on the disk. Exposure to foreign debris through the sidk slot can cause deterioration of the read/write heads.Other causes may be cable cannections may be bad, they may be loose or installed backwards.

Troubleshooting Floppy Disks and Drives: Usually when they fail it is easier to throw them away, If knowing that the data is important there are some advanced techniques that may save some data. When they don't work at all either you can't hear it spinning or the light does'nt come on, or the light stays on. Also the Floppy drives errors will show up during the POST portion of the boot cycle. The error will show up as FDD Controller Failure or Driver A: Not Ready. places to look for encounter problems these are three places to look.

The cables

BIOS/CMOS

The Drive

Summary from Unit Eight

Hard Drive history the Fist hard drives came out in late 1970’s and early 1980’s and were code named “Winchester”. The original design concept included two 30 MB limits in one enclosure:30-30. A hard disk operators on the same principle as a floppy disk. It has a spinning platter with a pair of read /write heads that traverse per pendicular to rotation of the platter. There are two reasons why a hard drive is different from floppies. One is the platters are made of an aluminum alloy and have thin magnetic media coating on both sides, Two is they are sealed in enclosure free of dust, dirt and any continuants. hard disk have always had much larger capacity than floppies.

How does a Hard Drive work? A hard drive is to achieve fast, random access to data stored on a flat surface. And this is accomplished by utilizing motion in two direction’s there than the disk spins anywhere between 3600 RPM and 10,000 RPM, and the read/write heads are moved across the platter perpendicular to the motion of the disk. Magnetically storing data the read/write heads are made of V-shaped conductive material wrapped with coils of wire. Passing current through the coil and rapidly changing it’s direction produces magnetic fields, thus writing to the disk

Hard Disk Geometry in order data to be stored and retrieved from the surface of a hard disk, the data must be organized. Organization will determine two things, maximun amount of data that can be data is retrieve. Hard drives are composed of one or more desk or platters on more disk or platters on which data is stored . The five numerical values of logical geometry are Heads, Cylinders, Sectors, Landing Zone, Write Precomp, though Preomp and Landing Zone are of solete but can often be seen on older drives.

Cylinders data is stored in concentric circles on the surfaces of each platter. A set of track through a stack of heads is the cylinders. Heads the number of heads equals the total number of sides of all platter. For example if a hard drive has 6 platters it could have up to 12 heads. Sector’s a hard drive is cut into small arcs. And each arc is called a sector and holds 512 bytes of data.

Summary from Unit Nine

Expansion buses are used to connect to the motherboard devices and therefore allow the flow of data between those devices and other devices in the computer. Development of the Expansion bus every device in the computer is connected to the external data bus. And in order for this to work properly one a common method is required. So the solution would be to provide a common access point through a standard connector. And to provide this solution they were divided into two parts, each with their own clocks. So it would allow the devolvement of the CPU to be somewhat independent.

The two buses are called system bus - Which supports the CPU, RAM, and other motherboard components. The system bus runs at speeds that support the CPU, typically hundreds of MHE. Expansion bus will support any add-ons via the expansion slots and runs slower than the CPU at a speed that supports external devices. Local Bus the bus usually runs at the same speed as the CPU, and only chip set devices such as memory and disk controllers were attached. Vesa local bus, Bus or VT Bus was designed as an extension of I.S.A., 16 bit E.I.S.A. and MCA in which one was 16 bit as well and the other were 32 bit. Vesa local bus compared to the ISA because it as well was a 4.77 MHZ, and was essentially a direct connection to the 486-processor bus.

PCI The PCI bus incorporates a new set of controllers chips that provide a bridge between the CPU and the local bus, the PCI bus and the expansion. In which the PCI was designed for operations with the 32 and 64 bit systems. The AGP port provides the video processor with the direct access to systems RAM, allowing extremely first data transfers from the CPU to your monitor. A AGP is also completely separated from the PCI bus, allowing each to run independently.

Configurations Expansion Cards the purpose of a bus is to connect devices to a motherboard by installing an expansion card. The expansion bus is like a large party line, with all devices connected to the same line. I/O addressing the bus system establishes a connection between the CPU and the expansion devices and provides a path for the flow of data. I/O address are binary numbers placed on the address bus by the CPU or the address bus is a special set of connections that allows the CPU and system controller to get the attention of the other devices.

Configurations IRQS is Manuel configurations that are a lot of trouble and work, and with plug- and- play it is all so easier. However a non- plug-and-play devices lacking a fixed a or standard IRQ must be set during in stallion. There are only a few IRQ’s in a computer and no two manually configured devices can have the same IRQ assignment and be expected to work properly.

DMA channels devices that use DMA usually move large amounts of data very fast, sound cards and hard drives are examples of devices that will use DMA.

Summary from Unit Ten

Network is two or more computer link together to communicate and share information. Basic requirements before a network can become a network, you must have a way to connect. Network include the Hardware that is physical components,In which are shared language. Two terms are important to network media are Network media is the entire network hardware that physically connects the one computer to another. The other is Interface network the hardware that attaches a computer to a media network and acts as an interpreter between the computer and the network.

Protocol establishes the rules on how computers talk to and understand each-other. Protocol also includes timing of communication. Services defines what a computer shares with the rest of the network. This is what it would look like once everything is connected together, these are some steps so they may work properly:

The connections must operate so that the computer can send or receive electrical signals across the physical media that link computer.

Protocol must function so that when one computer sends a message, the others can listen and understand the message.

The computers must be capable of working together, where one provides a service and the computer delivers a service, and vice versa.

The local area network a LAN is network that covers a limited distance, usually a single site or facility, and allow information and resources sharing.

Terminal emulation software is sharing data and peripherals and software, with storage and the other benefits like resilience, copying and communication gateway. Wide Area Network connections to these sites requires the use of ordinary telephone lines, T1 lines, ISD lines, radio waves, or satellite links.

Types of Network two types of network are Peer-to-Peer each computer can act as either a server data or client. It can be server one moment and client the next. The Client Network requires a central server, or dedicated a computer, to manage access to all shared resources.

Networking Topologies describes the appearance or layout of a network and how data flows through the network Networking components in order to build a network, several network-specific components are needed.