IT Hardware

1
IT Hardware

• Left The on-board L2 cache.
• Right The Pentium Pro processor core with 5.5
  million transistors.

Source Intel
2
Motherboard components
bus , chipset, CPU, memory
3
Motherboard bus system

• data bus
• address bus
• system/control bus
• expansion slots
• ISA, EISA, VESA,SCSI, PCI, AGP
• How local bus works? PCI vs VESA
• Bus speeds Pentium 4 and AthlonXP

4
Motherboard chipset

• components of the chipset
• memory controller
• I/O controller
• bus controller
• cache controller
• chipset desirable features
• EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM
• Pipeline Burst (Synchronous) SRAM cache
• PCI local bus
• APM (Advanced Power Management)
• ECC (error correction code) or no ECC?
• types of chipsets

5
Main Memory

• basic concepts
• memory banks (0,1,2) 64 Meg to 1 Gig
• SIMMs (single in-line memory modules), DIMMS
  (dual in-line memory modules), SDRAM (synchronous
  DRAM)
• SIMMs older, DIMMS old, SDRAM newer PCs
• organization conventional and extended
• additional references
• Upgrading memory
• cnet RAM Primer
• PNY Electronics configure memory
• Crucial memory selector

6
Disk drives

• Hard-drives
• Overview
• Speed
• Interfaces IDE, SCSI, SATA, IDE vs SCSI
• CD and DVD
• basics CD standard and DVD standards
• Interface ATAPI
• USB flash drives
• Overview

7
Disk drive performance

• Fragmentation overview and defragmentation
  software.
• Compression overview and file, folder and drives
  compression in Windows.
• Cache overview and hardware vs. software
• Swap file (paging file) overview and changing
  its size
• File System NTFS, FAT32, FAT

8
Others

• graphics cards BIOS and memory
• monitors resolution, size, analog vs. digital
• printers ink, laser, color, speed.
• Modems phone lines, cable and DSL
• scanners
• digital cameras