Inside your computer

Hardware Review Motherboard Processor / CPU Bus Bios chip Memory Hard drive Video Card Sound Card Monitor/printer Ports

Computer memory BIOS (flash memory) Read Only Memory (ROM) Random Access Memory (RAM) chips on motherboard open files Virtual (part of your OS) pagefile.sys Video graphics and games

Memory facts Stored in KB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes), GB (gigabytes), TB (terabytes) One MB ~ 1 million memory locations A memory location (byte) stores one character So, 512 MB will store about 512 million characters. One MB can store about 500 pages of text information

Software = Computer Program = Instructions Allow you to use your computer Without software, the computer is useful as a planter Software

When you open an application, memory must be used to store the program that’s running and the file you have open. Open files are stored in RAM chips. Physical chips Temporary storage of files and instructions When files are too big to fit in RAM, the excess goes to Virtual Memory (on the hard drive). The video is stored in Video memory, often in special chips on the Video card. Using Software

Sometimes you don’t need to save … Listing to music Playing games Surfing the Net When you do need to save a file, you must select a storage device. In this class, you will save to your number; your personal drive on the school network. At home, you probably save to the C drive; the hard disk in your computer. Creating Files

Storage devices Can be internal or external Measured in: Size (MB, GB, TB) Speed (mHz)

Inside your computer