Computers.

Tutorial I - Computer Basics

  A computer is made up of Hardware and Software. The general hardware that a computer has to have are Mother board, Processor, Memory, Video Graphic Accelerator, and I/O ports. Hopefully you already understand what these things do...if u don’t, don’t worry; here is a summary of what they do:

1. Motherboard

Holds the CPU (Central Processing Unit), and this is where all the logic processes take place. The CPU is the main important thing that is important on the motherboard, other than that, the motherboard is where the information is passed through from one other hardware to another…e.g. from keyboard through the mother board-CPU- to the monitor (through the VGA- video graphic accelerator)

         2. Processor

         This is where the entire processes take place….the processor has a clock inside it which it uses to execute programs….this is the method in which the computer uses to execute (run) programs. When we talk of a 500mhz processor we mean that the computers clock spins at 500,000,000 cycles in one second. So then if the program executed could use one cycle for executing one command in the programming language, then it is quite fast.

        3. Memory

        This is where all programs are stored and run from. There are two types of memory inside your computer; these are Virtual memory and Permanent Memory. The virtual memory is RAM, which stands for Random Accessory Memory. The permanent memory is your Hard Disk. The RAM is used to store the start-up process of your computer. Every time your computer starts, the RAM sends information to the processor to check all the hardware which are connected to the computer…this is why when starting up your computer you always see the keyboard lights blinking all, the CD ROM (Read Only Memory-which means the information cannot be changed, its just for reading) blink also, the monitor naturally goes on, you diskette drive also blinks to check up for a startup diskette, then it follows to check for the start up inside your CD ROM drive, if it misses then it checks for it on the hard disk. The hard disk contains your programs. So when loading a program, it first transfers the information to the virtual memory (RAM) and then runs it from there.

        4. Video Graphic Accelerator. (VGA)

        This is the hardware the computer uses to communicate with the monitor….the VGA explains to the monitor what kind of figures to display on the screen. The monitor itself is just a spray of electrons which glow after heating the surface ….I don’t think learning about the inside of a monitor is very important but if u would like to know more about it, please feel free to hola at [email protected] .

        4. I/O ports (Input/Output ports)

           These are just hardware that is used to connect external hardware, e.g. keyboard, mouse to the internal part of the computer. Examples of i/o ports are like USB port, which is the latest and best used, printer port, etc.

That’s about it on the hardware part, now let’s dig deeper. There are several languages that are been used to communicate with computers (I mean programming languages) these are BASIC, Pascal, and Dos, just to mention but a few. All these languages follow the IPO rule. IPO- Input-Process-Output

In this case I will only talk of the language your computer uses, which is Dos. DOS stands for Disk Operating System. The computer generally infact has its own language, which is known as a binary number system….The Dos programming language only translates the language from human language to computer language. In this case the human language being DOS and the computer language being Binary numbers. A bit about binary numbers.

Binary Numbers.

Binary is just a number but to the base of 2. All the normal numbers (Known as decimals) that we keep on mentioning all the time are just to the base of ten. In computers the only numbers that a computer understands are 0 and 1 only. So whatever you are even reading right now has just been shown to the screen by a series of 1’s and 0’s. The list of binary numbers are: 1,10,11,100,101,110,111,1000,1001,1011,…………..111000011001,……1111110010110010110…..etc, etc this numbers are normally translated into two other types of numbers…these being, Octadecimal and Hexadecimal.  These are the numbers that we use to execute programs i.e. programmers use hexadecimal and octadecimal to give commands to be done. This is then translated into binary form, which the computer can understand…the translation is all done inside the Central Processing Unit.

OctaDecimal.

 This are numbers that are to the base of 8, these numbers are :0,1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7. This was used in the old computers and proved to have little characters to represent commands hence the up-come of Hexadecimal, which are sixteen numbers.

Hexadecimal.

These are numbers to the base of 16. these numbers are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E & F. So when we program with the hex number of 0…this to the computer is translated as 1. the table below will give a better understanding.

Have fun as much and whenever as you can. Never let an opportunity pass by for opportunity only knocks once, and you will only notice it’s worthiness at the bream of loosing it. Have Fun and Yet be very very careful…look and (fore) see.

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