Computer Basics - Computer Engineering Technology

Computer Basics
© Copyright 2003 Janna B. Gallaher
The Personal Computer
t The
personal computer was made possible by the invention of
solid state electronics and specifically the integrated circuit.
t The first microprocessors were made in the late 1960’s and were
very simple in structure
PC Architecture
Sound
Monitor
Video
Ram
Video
Processor
Motherboard
Power On
Reset
CPU
BIOS
Cache
DRAM
Memory
64mB – 1GB
Local Bus 64-bit data, 32-bit address, 133 mhz
Keyboard
Bridge
Bridge
EISA Bus
CD ROM
Mouse
LAN
Ethernet
Floppy
Disk
Hard
Disk
USB
Bridge
PCI Bus
PC Motherboard
t Gigybyte GA-71XE
motherboard
Parallel and Serial Ports
Keyboard and
Mouse connectors
Microprocessor
ISA Expansion
Slots
AGP Video
Connector
RAM Memory Slots
BIOS
Floppy Disk Connector
PCI Expansion
Slots
Battery
Hard Disk Drive Connectors
PC Motherboard Block Diagram
t Gigabyte
manual)
GA-72XE motherboard block diagram (from the owner’s
The Microprocessor
t Block
diagram of an Intel 8086 microprocessor
Interrupt Control
Serial I/O Control
8-bit Internal Data Bus
Register Array
Accumulator
Temp. Register
Arithmetic Logic
Unit (ALU)
Flag Flip-flops
Timing and
Control
Instruction
Decoder and
Machine Cycle
Encoding
Instruction
Register
Address Buffer
B
C
Reg
Reg
D
E
Reg
Reg
H
L
Reg
Reg
Stack Pointer
Address
Prog. Counter
Data
Inc/Dec Address
Buffer
The Microprocessor (continued)
t Block
diagram of the Intel Itanium processor which is one of the
newer microprocessors available
Diagram courtesy Intel Corp
Software
t
There are 3 levels of software required to do something on a PC
t The
BIOS
t The Operating System
t Applications
RAM
Memory
Application: Word Processor
BIOS
Used during
boot process
Programs Stored on Disk
Operating
System
Manages computer
operation
Application: Photo Editor
Application: Database
Application: HTML Editor
Software
t BIOS
t Lowest
level program on the PC
t BIOS is an acronym for: Basic Input/Output System
t It is a program that is stored in Read-Only-Memory on the motherboard
t It is a program that is unique to each motherboard model and provides disk
drive configuration information for the operating system along with the
system time, security access, and other low-level settings.
t The BIOS is executed during the boot process
BIOS Chip
The Operating System Software
t Operating System
t The
operating system is the software that has the job of managing all of the
tasks that a computer is asked to do
t It performs file management and it writes to and reads from the disk
t It loads and executes application programs
t Manages how to use all of the peripheral devices
t Receives commands from the keyboard and outputs data to the monitor
t Two popular operating systems for the PC are Windows and Linux
although there are others
t Applications
Application Programs
are programs that you run to
perform tasks on the computer
t Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Access, Visual
Studio, MathCad, AutoCad, Photoshop, and
Oracle are just a few of thousands of programs
t These programs must be written using a
programming language that will convert an idea
into instructions that a computer can execute
Programming Languages
t
t
t
t
t
Programming languages allow us to
convert ideas into computer code
The computer can only understand
sequences of 1’s and 0’s and humans
are used to conversing in English or
some other language
A programming language provides the
means of converting English sentences
into machine code
There are many programming languages
and each one has its advantages and
disadvantages
One good general purpose programming
language is C
Writing Programs
t Writing
programs involves knowing several things:
t The
application – what it is that you want to do on the computer
t The operating system – how does the program interface with the computer
t The language syntax – what it takes to write programs
t A program development environment – a compiler and debugger or other
program development tools
t Other tools such as mathematics, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence
algorithms, signal processing techniques, etc.
t Engineering
written
the solution must be done first before any code is