Basic Terminology – bits and bytes Bits Nibble The smallest unit of information in a computer 0 or 1 A nibble consists of 4 bits Bytes 8 bits Eg. 00001110 = 14 Basic Terminology KB MB Mega Bytes Eg. 1 MB = 1,048,576 ≈ 1,000,000 Bytes GB Kilo Bytes Eg. 1 KB = 1,024 Bytes ≈ 1,000 Bytes Giga Bytes Eg. 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 ≈ 1,000,000,000 Bytes TB Tera Bytes Eg. 1 TB = 1000 GB Computer - basic components PSU (Power Supply Unit) Power up the computer HDD (Hard Disk Drive) A mass-storage for the computer Size: 3.5” for desktop, 2.5” for laptop Speed: 5400/7200 RPM Type: ATA100/133 vs. SATA Capacity: 8/17/32/60/80/120/160/250/500GB 500GB = ½TB Basic components (cont) FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) Format: 5¼ ” or 3.5” Capacity: 1.2M or 1.4M Optical Drive CDROM/CD-RW for CD DVDROM/DVD-RW for DVD Basic components (cont) Motherboard (MOBO) Primary circuit board of the computer Form factor: AT, ATX, Mini-ATX, Micro-ATX, LPX NLX, BTX Basic components (cont) Floppy Disk Controller Power Connector CPU socket Back plane I/O IDE Controller SATA Controller CPU (Central Processing Unit or processor) The brain of the computer Performs computation, data processing, etc http://www.intel.com/products/i/products/pentium4.jpg http://www.global-b2b-network.com/direct/dbimage/50086366/CPU_Cooler.jpg Brand Intel AMD K6/2, K7, Sempron, Athlon, Opteron Clock speed 286/386/486, Pentium III/4, Xeon, Dual-Core, Core 2 Solo/Duo 66/100/200/300/450/600/800MHz 1.2/1.4/1.6/1.83/2.0/3.0/3.2GHz Overclocking Forces a CPU to run faster than it was designed for RAM (Random Access Memory) A place that a program and data are kept so that they are accessible by the CPU Types: SDRAM/DDR/DDR2/SO-DIMM Name DDR-200/266/333/400 DDR2-400/533/667/800 Capacity 32/64/128/256/512MB 1/2/4GB Expansion slots A place that expansion cards can be inserted to increase the functionality of the computer Eg. Modem card, audio card, video card, Ethernet card, etc. Type ISA PCI AGP PCI Express Back panel I/O Mouse Keyboard Printer Port Serial Port Firewire Port VGA port Ethernet Port USB port Audio ports Operating Systems Windows 95/2000/NT/XP/Vista/Windows 7 Mac OS X (10.3/10.4) Linux Distribution: Slackware/Redhat/Suse/Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS/ Mint