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
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

MB

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
Mega Bytes
Eg. 1 MB = 1,048,576 ≈ 1,000,000 Bytes
GB
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

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