INF 110: Computer
Hardware
Lecture 1
An Overview of System Components
Computers
The word computer comes from the word “compute”,
which means, “to calculate”
A computer is an electronic device capable of receiving
input (data from user), stores it for a short period of time,
manipulates it according to the set of instructions known
as programme and generates output in a desired format.
In simple terms, all computers are made up of four basic
functions:
Data Input
Data Output
Data Processing
Data Storage
The Four Basic Functions of a Computer
INPUT DATA: A computer as an electronic device
should receive data from the users and this can only
be made possible by using input devices such as
keyboard, mouse, scanners, etc.
STORAGE: A computer as an electronic device
should store the data being processed and this can
only be done by using storage devices such as hard
disk, pen drives, floppy disk, CD-ROM, etc.
PROCESSING: Computer as an electronic device
should process the data into information. This can
only be made possible by using a central processing
unit (CPU) such as Intel and AMD processors.
OUTPUT DATA: Computer again as an electronic
device should distribute and communicate (output)
the information using monitor, speakers, printers, etc.
Diagram showing the four major
functions of a computer
Input Data Processing Storage
Intel and AMD
Output Data
Input
Devices Output Storage
Keyboard Devices Devices
Mouse Monitor RAM
Scanner Printer Hard drive
Card Reader Magnetic Tape
Looking Inside the Box (System Unit)
Most of the processing and storage devices show
up “inside the box.” This section gives you a look
at the major elements that you will find inside the
system housing, or case:
Processor/CPU
The processor (also known as the central processing unit,
or CPU) is the “brain of the computer,” so to speak.
The processor performs a limited set of calculations based
on requests from the operating system and controls
access to system memory.
Processor speed is measured in several different ways,
including clock cycles or megahertz (MHz) and gigahertz
(GHz), and millions of instructions per second (MIPS). Any
of these measures give you an estimate of the processor’s
speed/power.
Storage devices
Storage devices on your computer are responsible
for storing data, such as the operating system,
applications, and actual output of applications or
user data.
Depending on the amount and type of data, the
seven basic types of devices to work with
are:
• Floppy drives
• Hard drives
• Solid-state drives (SSD)
• Hybrid drives
• Optical drives
• Magnetic tape drives
• Flash drives
When dealing with storage devices, the four
major technologies used to connect hard drives to
motherboards are:
IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), ATA
(Advanced Technology Attachment), or PATA
(Parallel ATA) after the arrival of SATA.
SATA (Serial ATA)
SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)
SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
SATA is usually thought of as an internal
technology, but there is rising in popularity of
eSATA (External SATA), which provides an external
connector to the SATA bus. Some external USB
hard drives also support eSATA connectors.
The type of drives that you can attach to your
Memory
Memory is a solid-state (that is, no moving parts) storage
medium. It can take many forms, such as RAM (random
access memory), flash RAM, ROM (read-only memory), or
EPROM (erasable programmable ROM).
Access time for RAM is measured in nanoseconds (one-
billionth of a second). When memory is discussed, it
usually refers to RAM, which is the computer’s primary
working memory.
RAM is a form of storage albeit typically temporary storage.
Many people might not think of RAM as a storage medium
because it is volatile and loses its information when power
is removed, but temporary storage is still storage.
RAM is always temporary, and requires power to retain
information. When you put your computer into a
hibernation state, the contents of RAM are written to a file,
and then retrieved when you power up your computer.
RAM is where you work with your data and
programs, while ROM and EPROM memory in
your computer holds the operating code for your
computer, which includes the Power-On Self Test
(POST) routine and motherboard level
processes.
Do not confuse ROM operating code with your
Operating System (OS), which is stored on the
hard drive and runs in RAM.
System Board
The term system board describes any number of circuit
boards that make up the internals of your computer, but
it is used most often to describe the motherboard.
The motherboard is the main board in your computer
that contains the BIOS chips, RAM, I/O ports, and CPU.
This board maintains the electrical pathways that enable
all other components to communicate with each other.
Some service manuals use the term daughter board to
describe a secondary board that contains motherboard
functions, such as disk or I/O control.
A daughter board is a board that contains some of the
chips that could have been put on the motherboard but
were not — perhaps because of space limitations or for
other reasons.
It is common to see them used in laptops and other
mobile devices.
Power Supply
The power supply does exactly what its name
suggests: It supplies power to the rest of the
components in the computer.
The power supply takes 120 or 240 volts
(depending on the country you are in) of
alternating current (AC) from your electrical outlet
and converts it to 3.3 V, 5 V, and 12 V of direct
current (DC).
It contains a number of leads that supply different
voltages for different types of devices (such as
hard drives, PCIe expansion cards, and floppy
drives — which you will not likely have a need for).
Adapter Cards
Adapter cards allow you to adapt your computer to
another role (such as controlling assembly line robots)
or to add specific functionality to your computer (such
as printing).
The most common adapters are now integrated into
most motherboards. These components include
display, network, keyboard controller, mouse
controller, serial ports, parallel ports, FireWire ports,
and USB ports.
When the first computers came out on the market,
most of the elements (if not all of them) were added
to the motherboard by using the adapter slots, such
as ISA, PCI, PCI Express, and AGP (well, ISA anyway,
because the other slots did not exist)
Cooling System and Fan
To remove heat from computer systems, there has been a
steady increase in the use of fans, vents, and other
heat-dissipation units. Heat sinks with fans are
commonly placed on processors and critical chipsets.
Heat sinks are made of heat-conductive metals (usually
aluminum or copper), with a solid side in contact with the
chip that they are protecting and thin fins on the other side,
thus putting greater surface area with the air, which helps
dissipate or transfer heat to the air.
The use of a fan with the heat sink allows more cool air to
flow through the fins.
Case vents and fans bring cool air into the computer
housing, and also vent and pull out hot air.
Faster processors produce more heat. As processors have
become faster, more methods for pulling the heat away
from the processor have been developed, such as liquid-
cooling systems.
Firmware and Chipsets
Firmware fills in a middle ground between software
and hardware, where the distinct line begins to
disappear.
Firmware is programming code (software) that is
contained in or stored on the IC (integrated circuit)
chips (hardware) on your computer. This combination
of hardware and software makes up the BIOS on
several different devices, with settings stored in
CMOS or flash RAM.
The compatibility of these chips and the code that
ties them together is provided by a single supplier,
and this group of chips is referred to as a chipset.
Intel and VIA Technologies produce popular chipsets
BIOS
BIOS is short for basic input-output system.
The BIOS is actually software that is stored on
a ROM chip on the motherboard.
Most systems today use a flash EPROM to store
the BIOS so that the user can update the
programming code in the BIOS.
The BIOS is responsible for controlling or
managing low-level but extremely important
processes like the POST (Power-on Self-Test),
the boot process, and the interaction of
components on the motherboard.
UEFI
UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware
Interface and represents the next generation
of the low level ROM-based code that controls
motherboard processes, but with a great deal
of enhancements.
UEFI is capable of supporting advanced
diagnostic tools, even without having an OS
installed on the computer.
UEFI supports network booting, secure boot,
and even has a limited shell for running
commands.
CMOS
CMOS (complementary metal-oxide
semiconductor) is often confused with BIOS/UEFI.
BIOS/UEFI is programing code that is stored on a ROM
and EPROM chip and controls the loading of the
operating system as well as low-level functions.
BIOS/UEFI often has settings that the user may
control, and these settings are stored in CMOS
memory, where CMOS refers to the type of
manufacturing process that creates this integrated
circuit and most other integrated circuits.
Most RAM chips rely on CMOS technology to store
information, but when discussing CMOS, you will be
referring to the hardware configuration settings that
are saved between reboots of your computer.
Remember that BIOS/UEFI stores programming code,
and CMOS stores settings for the BIOS/UEFI options.
Checking Outside the Box (System Unit)
Now that you have looked at what is inside the
box, you will want to see what gets added to
the system - outside the box.
Cases and form factors
There are many different form factors for
the box, some of which dictate the form
factor of the motherboard going into the
case.
Computer cases are most often tower or
desktop form factors, but are also found in
sizes and shapes that make them
attractive for entertainment units and in
extremely small forms for specific uses.
The term form factor refers to the size of the
object (be it hard drive, motherboard, or case),
and many objects have industry specifications
that define acceptable or allowed sizes.
Motherboards and hard drives have industry-
wide specifications, yet computer cases do not
have specifications on their size or shape.
Computer cases do need to adhere to the
specifications of the internal components (such
as hard drives and motherboards) to allow for
these devices to be properly mounted inside of
the case.
Input and Output Devices
Computers use many different kinds of input and output
devices (also called I/O devices), which connect to the
computer via one of the computer’s ports.
Monitor
The different types of buses that can provide video
services include:
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect), which
runs at 33 MHz and 66 MHz and carries 32 bits of data
(approximately 132 MBps or 264 MBps).
PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect
Express), or PCI Express, is a high-speed serial bus,
so its speed is measured differently than the others,
which are parallel buses.
PCI-X (Peripheral Component Interconnect
Extended), which runs at 133 MHz and carries
32 to 64 bits of information. This provides a
maximum throughput of approximately 532
MBps per direction.
AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), which
runs at 66 MHz (but can be increased to 8x the
base speed, or 528 MHz) and carries 64 bits of
data (approximately 2 GBps).
Modem
Modem is short for modulator/demodulator.
Modulation refers to the conversion of a digital signal to
an analog signal, and demodulation reverses this
process.
Your computer is digital, and phone lines that you want
to communicate over are analog.
In order to allow the digital signal to be passed over the
analog lines, you must use a modem.
Standard modems connect to your computer through
the serial port and can be either:
Synchronous (kept in synchronization by an external
clock)
Asynchronous (kept in synchronization by control
signals in transmission)
Most modems that are purchased for a computer are
asynchronous.
Ports
On your computer, ports act as connection points for cables,
which allow for the transfer of data between your computer and
another device.
Several different types of connectors and cables are used to join
devices. Although the list of devices that communicate through the
different types of ports is limitless, some of the basic types of ports
and their uses are listed below:
Serial Port: Connects serial devices, such as modems, to your
computer.
Parallel Port: Connects parallel devices, such as printers, to your
computer
Video Port: Connects a monitor to your computer.
USB Port: Connects various types of devices to your computer.
Devices that used other ports in the past are increasingly being
converted to use USB ports. Devices that use this port include
printers, modems, mice, keyboards, and scanners.
Keyboard Port: Connects a keyboard to your computer.
Mouse Port: Connects a mouse to your computer
