What is a Computer?

The basic definition of a computer is a device that can take in information, process it, and return it. If you think about that, it never mentions anything about having a hard disk, or memory or any computer parts at all. The definition isn't even refering to anything eletrical at all! This means there were other devices made before what you think a computer is. So it was made somewhere in the 1900's, right? Actually, the first computer was made thousand of years ago. Around 10,000 to be a bit more specific. One of the first computers was an Abacus. "How's that thing even related to a computer?!?" is probably what you're thinking, but it fits the definition perfectly. It can take in information, process it, and return it.

Binary System

I bet sometimes you wonder how a computer takes in information. It thinks faster than a human can so it has to be smarter... On the contrary, a computer can only understand two things, on and off. To use a computer, you can't really keep turning it on and off to send and recieve information, it isn't really practical. Try doing that with your monitor, not so much fun. This is where the Binary System comes in.

You've probably heard or read something about computers and the numbers 1's and 0's. How do they relate? Since a computer can only understand on and off, the Binary System made on and off into 1's and 0's. 1 as in on and 0 as in off. This way you don't have to turn your computer off and on just to get information. The Binary is in the base 2 system, meaning it only has two numbers. Normally, people use the base 10 system, which has 10 numbers.

When you hit the A key on the keyboard, the computer doesn't understand that you're saying A. It understands a code given to the letter a which is made of 1's and 0's. Each key on your keyboard has a different code given to it. Each sound in a song has a different code, and the code is all the computer understands. It doesn't know you're listening to music.

We use place value like this:
10000 1000 100 10 1

Binary Place value goes like this:
32 16 8 4 2 1

If you wanted to make the computer understand the number 24, you would have an 'on' or a 1 in the 16 and 8 place value and a 0, or 'off', for the numbers that are not needed.

16 8 4 2 1
1 1 0 0 0

So the computer understands that 11000 is 16 in Binary.

Every piece of information that goes on your computer is called a bit.
8 bits = 1 byte
1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1000 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
1000 gigabytes = 1 terabyte
1000 terabytes = 1 petabyte
1 kilobyte actually has 1024, but it's rounded off to 1000. So when you get a new computer with 80GB of harddisk space, and it only has 74, the extra bytes were not rounded, but taken off.

Motherboard/CPU

Your Processor is attached to your motherboard, every part of your computer is connected to the motherboard. That's why it's called a CPU (Central Processing Unit). Parts like CD/DVD Drives, Floppy drives are connected through an FFC, Flat Flexible Cable. Other Parts like A Video card or a Sound card are attached through slots on your motherboard.
There are different types of slots. PCI-Express is the newest one. Other ones like AGP and PCI should be in your computer right now if your computer is about 1 - 2 years old. The things your attach have to fit into the slot, there are 64 bit and 128 bit slots and whatever you need to attach should be right, or it won't work. There are some motherboards that have some PCI slots and then a few PCI-Express slots.

In class, we saw an internal modem and a Sound Card fixed into a motherboard. An internet model is for people who use Dial-up, it's that annoying sound making thing that you wondered about at one point in your life. Modem is short for Modulator Demodulator.

BIOS

The BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) tells your computer what to do everytime it starts up. Have you ever seen the movie '50 first Dates'? The woman in the movie forgot everything she did prevoius day everytime she woke up. She's like your computer. To remind herself who she is and what's her purpose, she would have to write what her name was, what to do and how to do it, etc.. The piece of paper she wrote it on is her BIOS. Without the BIOS your computer would just be metal, taking up space.
The BIOS has a little battery attached to it on the motherboard, if it's taken off, the BIOS resets itself to how it was when you first got it.
The BIOS is attached to your motherboard and is really small. The one's we saw were about 1inch x 1inch. Usually they're labeled, but not always.

RAM

RAM Stands for Random Acess Memory. People usually tend to get a Hard drive and RAM mixed up. Here's a simple way to explain the difference:
Pretend a bookshelf is your harddrive. The bookshelf has alot of books, which is the data on your harddrive. A table is your memory. To read a book, or your data, you take it off the shelf and put it on the table to read it. If your table is small, as in you don't have much memory, you might be able to read 3 books at a time. But if your table is huge, you can read maybe up to 20 books. Basically, RAM holds the data you are using at the moment, and your harddrive holds the data which is already saved. Once you turn off your computer, everything on your RAM is wiped away. That's why you should save your work.

Today, the class saw 1 MB of RAM from when Mr.Case was in University. It was half the size of a textbook... and just 1MB. And having 1MB of RAM then was so cool. It costed around $1000. We also saw 1 MB of RAM later on, it was half the size of a ruler. It shows how much technology has developed in the past few decades. Now you can fit 1GB of RAM on that little piece. It's also much cheaper. 2GB of RAM should cost somewhere between $400-500.
An average motherboard nowadays allows you to hold 1-2GB of RAM. Some extremely good computers let you hold 16GB of RAM. I'd like to game on one of those computers >:).

Since organizing my blog with class dates got rather annoying and unorganized, I'm going to make a blog on each part and update them when I aquire new information.

Monday, September 10 - Friday, September 15, 2006

Hardware Project notes:

-A Harddisk uses platters which are round and flat disks.
-The platter is made of two main materials. A substrate material that form the bulk and gives it structure and resistance(e.g. Glass or Aluminium). To be suitable, the substrate material has to be durable, easy to work with, lightweight, stable, does not react to magnetic materials, and inexpensive.
-The next is a very, very thin coating of magnetic material where the actual data is stored. It is about a few millionths of an inch in thickness.
-The platters have a hole cut into the center of them and are fixed onto a spindle.
-These platters rotate at a high speed, they are driven by a spindle motor which is connected to the spindle.
-The platters spin at 3200 to 7200 RPM(Rotations per minute). That's 3000 inches per second or 274kph. The best hard disk in the world spins at 15000 RPM.
-Electromagnetic read/write devices called heads are fixed onto sliders and used to record information onto the disk or read information from it.
-The read/write heads are energy converters-They convert eletrical signal into magnetical signals and vice-versa.
-Tiny electro magnets perform this conversion using a special encoding method which converts data to streams of 0's and 1's and writes it on the disk.
-The sliders are fixed on arms. The arms are all mechanically fixed into a single row and are positioned over the surface of the platters by a device called an actuator.
-A motherboard controls the activity of the other parts and communicates with the rest of the computer.

-Each surface of a platter can hold billions of bits of data. They are organized into larger parts for easier use. also to acess the information faster.
-Every platter has two heads. One on top and one on the bottom. Example: A hard disk with 4 platters has 8 heads.
-Each platter has its information recorded in concentric (meaning to have the same center) circles called tracks.
-Tracks can be broken down to smaller pieces called sectors. Each sector can hold 512 bytes of information.

-The hard disk must be made to a high degree of precision because of the small size of the parts.
-The main part of the disk is kept away from the air outside to make sure no contamination gets onto the platters. Dust, random thinsg floating around in the air.
-It could cause damage to the read/write heads.

The rest of this project is on Rakkan's blog.

Other information Aquired from:
How Stuff Works
Google for definitions
Wikipedia
PC Guide

Friday, September 08, 2006

Today the class learned about E-mail. There are two way you can use e-mail:

Pop3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) - Lets you download and install software, for e-mailing, onto your hard drive.
Examples: Outlook Express, GetMail.

Webmail - Lets you use send and recieve e-mail while you're on the internet.
Examples: Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com.

The first thing you have to do is sign-up for an e-mail address. The Sign-Up button shouldn't be hard to find on whichever e-mail provider you are using. In some special cases, like Gmail, the provider is still in a beta or test version. These providers usually have way~ better features than normal e-mail providers. You'll need an invite from a person who is already using that provider to sign-up. The invite is an e-mail that contains a link that takes you to the sign-up page. To recieve this e-mail, you need to have an existing e-mail from a provider that.. pretty much sucks :( Like Yahoo or Hotmail.

Once you've clicked sign-up, you'll be directed to a page where it asks you to fill out some personal information like your name, age, etc.. for security reasons and for ways to retrieve your password if it was lost. Not everything must be filled in, though. When you finally have an account, you can send e-mails :D.

To send an e-mail, you click on the New button. Different e-mail providers have different ways of saying 'make new e-mail,' like 'Compose' or 'Send' but it won't be hard to find it. After you've done that, it'll direct you to a different page where you have to fill out your message and other information.

Usually, the first thing you'll have to fill out on that page is 'To:' This is where you write in the e-mail of the person you are sending it to. The e-mail must be exact for the person to receive it. There may be lots of e-mails that may be close to it and you wouldn't want to be sending an important message to someone you don't know. Also, 99.99% of the time, the e-mail is NOT case sensitive. I find it rather annoying when people ask "Are there any capitals in your e-mail?" for some reason. Probably because the obvious is "IT DOESN'T MATTER"

The next thing you'll see is 'Cc'. I bet you wondered what that meant. Credit card? Canned corn? It's actually Carbon copy. You can still send me your credit card number anyway ;). This feature allows you to send the message you're typing to more than one person. Just type in another e-mail in this field. If it's more than just one person, normally, you just put in a comma and space, then the next e-mail. If not, then it should show instructions on how to do so. The e-mails put in here also have to be exact.

Next, you see Bcc. Boiled canned corn :(? Bcc means Blind Carbon copy. Bcc is the same as Cc; the only difference is that the e-mails typed here cannot be seen by the people receiving the message. Cc allows everyone who received the e-mail to see who else got it. Apparently this feature can be used for pranks too.

The last field you'll need to fill out before you get to type your e-mail is the subject. This is the first thing people see when they receive the e-mail. Usually only opened when the topic is something the person is interested in. You might want to make sure you type up an important subject just so the person(s) receiving the e-mail don't ignore it.

Finally, the last field you'll see is a big blank one where you can type up your message. You can also change the font color, size or type, but the more you do, the larger the e-mail size will get, slowing down the recieving process. Some people also find it annoying. If you want to attach a file to your e-mail, there should be a attach button somewhere that might also look like a paperclip. When you click it, it will direct you to another page or a pop-p might appear. It will show a blank field and a 'Browse' button beside it. Click browse and find the file you're looking for and click OK. You will need to upload this file before you can send it, or the person will not recieve it. Make sure you know the upload size limit and the size of your file because a long upload wait might en up in 'File too large'.

And for the love of god, please make sure you're not the only person who can understand your e-mail.

Once you've done typing up your e-mail and uploading any files that may need to be attached, you might want to save draft first or copy and paste the e-mail somewhere just incase your browser crashes or something in that sort happens. And lastly, check over everything you did and click 'send e-mail'. I bet this tutorial is longer than any e-mail you've written, because I know it is for me.

Some things you should know before opening an e-mail is a lot of things you receive can be harmful or inappropriate. You should always watch out for the title, what an attachment contains and most importantly, who sent it. Links to other websites can also be inappropriate and may be included in the e-mail. A good way to make sure is google them before you click on them.

If you like the e-mail and want to share it with someone else, just click on the forward button and write in the e-mail addresses of the people you want to send it to. This feature can also be used for irritation because this is how 'Chain mail' is sent around. Chain mail is considered spam, and in most cases, spam is not good. The term 'Spam' means unnecessary or unwanted stuff.

Alrighty, this pretty much sums up what I learned in class.
Some information used was from en.wikipedia.org. Wikipedia knows all. And please ignore the time this message was published. :D

Wednesday, September 04, 2006

Alright, first blog for school.
So, things I like.. Cars, games, Computers.
I like drawing and watching cartoons in the comedy genre.