Its All Geek to Me Computer Basics

The Information Processing Cycle MAIN MEMORY OUTPUT INPUT PROCESSING AUXILIARY STORAGE

INPUT DEVICES (Hardware) Keyboard Mouse Microphone Scanner Touch screens Bar code scanner Voice recognition Auxiliary Storage Device

OUTPUT DEVICES (HARDWARE) Useful information that leaves the system Output Hardware includes: Monitor: soft copy Printers: hard copy Projector Voice and music - speakers OUTPUT

MEMORY PROCESSING HARDWARE ROM READ ONLY MEMORY RAM RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY Small Instructions are installed permanently at the factory Cannot be changed These instructions check the computer’s resources and looks for Operating System Main Memory Temporary—it is erased when turned off. It is where programs and data is stored while being processed

PROCESSING HARDWARE Central Processing Unit: CPU The Brains or Intelligence of the computer. Controls input and output interprets instructions executes instructions. Silicon chip: integrated circuit board Pentium: name give to a particular chip Hertz: the speed of the CPU Gigahertz: executes a billion instructions per second Megahertz: executes a million instructions per second

Processors Come in Many Sizes Mainframe: large, powerful, serving many connected terminals. Super Computers Minicomputer: mid-sized, serves more than one user at a time Microcomputer: PC, individual workstation Laptop: portable, small Handheld: Palm Pilots

What is Data? Facts used by a computer Words Numbers

What two numbers are used in Binary Code? 0 and 1 They are each called a BIT 8 BITS make a BYTE 1 BYTE makes a letter or number KILOBYTE = 1,024 bytes MEGABYTE = 1,048,576 bytes GIGABYTE = 1,024 megabytes TERABYTE = 1,024 gigabytes

AUXILIARY STORAGE DEVICES Network Drive (H: drive) Hard Disk Drive (C:drive) Floppy Disk Drive with 3 ½” Floppy Disk (A:drive) Jump Drive/Thumb Drive I-Pod CD Read/Write Drive DVD Zip Drive AUXILIARY STORAGE

SOFTWARE Programs that Make the Computer Work Operating System Software Vista Windows XP: GUI (Graphical User Interface) Unix Linux Application Software Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, Front Page, Publisher WordPerfect Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver

What is the Boot Process? The process of starting up a computer from a halted or powered-down condition. Commands in ROM memory are followed The process of loading the Operating System software into Main Memory Windows 98 Windows XP Unix