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a complete illustrated guide to the pc hardware click learn contents www.mkdata.dk now 205 pages of course material for self study or remote instruction it would be to your advantage to print these pages click on the right hand frame before you enter the print command welcome to the click learn course used by schools teaching it designed in several modules some of which are sub divided to facilitate reading please remember the guest book 0 about michael karbo and his books publishers english language wanted please read qqqqq 4 about drives and other storage media q q q module 4a drives 4 pages module 4b hard disks 9 pages module 4c optic storage media 7 pages module 4d mo and zip drives 2 pages module 4e tape streamers 2 pages introduction to these pages news about click learn progress aabenraa where i live us publishers wanted search inside click learn q q 1 about pc data q q 5 about expansion cards and interfaces q module 1a about data 6 pages module 1b character tables 8 pages q 2 the pc system board about busses chip sets ram etc qqqqqq module 5a adapters and expansion cards 16 pages module 5b about interfaces eide ultra dma and agp 5 pages module 5c scsi firewire and usb 8 pages module 2a introduction to the pc 11 pages module 2b boot process system bus 6 pages module 2c i/o busses isa bus 7 pages module 2d chip sets 6 pages module 2e ram 6 pages q 6 about operating and file systems q q module 6a file systems 18 pages module 6b running and maintaining windows 95 4 pages module 6c relationship between operating system and hardware bios driver programs etc 10 pages 3 about cpu s q q q module 3a cpu 6 pages module 3b cpu improvements 6 pages module 3c cpu 5th 6th generation 15 pages module 3d over clocking the cpu s 9 pages 7 graphics q module 7a 16 pages about the screen pixels resolutions colors depth refresh-rates module 7b the monitor and the graphics card 12 pages module 7c about sound 9 pages q q q miscellaneous q links to other web sites file e education/click learn/start.htm 1 of 2 [4/15/1999 6:12:24 am]

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a complete illustrated guide to the pc hardware q q q please sign the guest book see the guest book or give your comments directly to mkarbo@mkdata.dk last revised 7 jun 1998 copyright c 1996 1997 1998 by michael b karbo www.mkdata.dk click learn visited times since 10dec96 english translation by erik karoll file e education/click learn/start.htm 2 of 2 [4/15/1999 6:12:24 am]

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click learn module 1a about data click learn module 1a www.mkdata.dk about data our pc s are data processors pc s function is simple to process data and the processing is done electronically inside the cpu and between the other components that sounds simple but what are data and how are they processed electronically in a pc that is the subject of these pages analog data the signals which we send each other to communicate are data our daily data have many forms sound letters numbers and other characters handwritten or printed photos graphics film all these data are in their nature analog which means that they are varied in their type in this form they are unusable in a pc the pc can only process concise simple data formats such data can be processed very effectively digital data the pc is an electric unit therefore it can only deal with data which are associated with electricity that is accomplished using electric switches which are either off or on you can compare with regular household switches if the switch if off the pc reads numeral 0 if it is on it is read as numeral one see the illustration below with our electric switches we can write 0 or 1 we can now start our data processing the pc is filled with these switches in the form of transistors there are literally millions of those in the electronic components each represents either a 0 or a 1 so we can process data with millions of 0 s and 1 s bits file e education/click learn/module1a.htm 1 of 5 [4/15/1999 6:13:21 am]

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click learn module 1a about data each 0 or 1 is called a bit bit is an abbreviation of the expression binary digit it is called binary since it is derived from the binary number system 0 1 0110 01101011 1 bit 1 bit 4 bit 8 bit the binary number system the binary number system is made up of digits just like our common decimal system 10 digit system but while the decimal system uses digits 0 through 9 the binary system only uses digits 0 and 1 if you are interested in understanding the binary number system then here is a brief course try if you can follow the system see how numbers are constructed in the binary system using only 0 s and 1 s numbers as known in the decimal-system same numbers in binary system 0 1 0 1 2 3 4 10 11 100 5 101 6 110 7 111 8 1000 file e education/click learn/module1a.htm 2 of 5 [4/15/1999 6:13:21 am]

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click learn module 1a about data digital data we have seen that the pc appears capable of handling data if it can receive them as 0 s and 1 s this data format is called digital if we can translate our daily data from their analog format to digital format they will appear as chains of 0 s and 1 s then the pc can handle them so we must be able to digitize our data pour text sounds and pictures into a funnel from where they emerge as 0 s and 1 s let us see how this can be accomplished bytes the most basic data processing is word processing let us use that as an example when we do word processing we work at a keyboard similar to a typewriter there are 101 keys where we find the entire alphabet a b c etc we also find the digits from 0 to 9 and all the other characters we need etc all these characters must be digitized they must be expressed in 0 s and 1 s bits are organized in groups of 8 a group of 8 bits is called a byte 8 bits 1 byte that is the system then what can we do with bytes first let us see how many different bytes we can construct a byte is an 8 digit number we link 0 s and 1 s in a pattern how many different ones can we make here is one 01110101 and here is another 10010101 we can calculate that you can make 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 different patterns since each of the 8 bits can have 2 values 28 two in the power of eight is 256 then there are 256 different bytes now we assign a byte to each letter and other characters and since we have 256 patterns to choose from there is plenty of room for all here you see some examples of the translation q character bit pattern byte number 65 66 character bit pattern byte number 188 46 a b 01000001 01000010 ¼ 10111100 00101110 file e education/click learn/module1a.htm 3 of 5 [4/15/1999 6:13:21 am]

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click learn module 1a about data cabopqrxyz 01000011 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110000 01110001 01110010 01111000 01111001 01111010 67 97 98 111 112 113 114 120 121 122 1 2 9 © 00111010 00100100 01011100 01111110 00110001 00110010 00111001 10101001 00111110 10001001 58 36 92 126 49 50 57 169 62 137 when you write the word summer you write 6 letters if the computer has to process that word it will be digitized to 6 bytes in other words the word summer occupies 6 bytes in the pc ram when you type it and 6 bytes on the hard disk if you save it ascii ascii means american standard code for information interchange it is an industry standard which assigns letters numbers and other characters within the 256 slots available in the 8 bit code the ascii table is divided in 3 sections q non printable system codes between 0 and 31 q lower ascii between 32 and 127 this part of the table originates from older american adp systems which work d on 7 bit character tables foreign letters like Ø and Ü were not available then q higher ascii between 128 and 255 this part is programmable in that you can exchange characters based on which language you want to write in foreign letters are placed in this part learn more about the ascii table in module 1b an example let us imagine a stream of bits sent from the keyboard to the computer when you type streams of 8 bits are sent to the computer let us look at a series of bits 001100010011001000110011 bits are combined into bytes each 8 bits these 24 bits are interpreted as three bytes let us read them as bytes 00110001 00110010 and 00110011 when we convert these byte binary numbers to decimal numbers you will see that they read as 49 50 and 51 in decimal numbers to interpret these numbers we have to look at the ascii table you will find that you have typed the numbers 1 2 and 3 file e education/click learn/module1a.htm 4 of 5 [4/15/1999 6:13:21 am]

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click learn module 1a about data about text and code now we have seen the pc s user data which are always digitized but there are many different kinds of data in the pc you can differentiate between 2 fundamental types of data q program code which are data that allow the pc to function q user data like text graphics sound the fact is that the cpu must have instructions to function you can read more about this in the review of the cpu in module 3a an instruction is a string of data of 0 s and 1 s the cpu is designed to recognize these instructions which arrive together with the user input data to be processed the program code is thus a collection of instructions which are executed one by one when the program runs each time you click the mouse or hit a key on the keyboard instructions are sent from your software program to the cpu telling it what to do next user data are those data which tells the software how to respond the letters illustrations home pages etc which you and i produce are created with appropriate software files both program code and user data are saved as files on the hard disk often you can recognize the type of file by its suffix here are some examples content file name program code start.exe win.com help.dll vmm32.vxd user data letter.doc house.bmp index.htm this is written as an introduction to naming files the file name suffix determines how the pc will handle the file you can read about this subject in some of my books e.g dos teach yourself to overview last revised 20 may 1998 copyright c 1996 1997 1998 by michael b karbo www.mkdata.dk click learn visited times since 10dec96 file e education/click learn/module1a.htm 5 of 5 [4/15/1999 6:13:21 am]

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omdata2 click learn module 1b www.mkdata.dk character tables here you see the complete ascii character table first the part from ascii-numbers 032 to 127 ascii-number common characters in windows symbol wingdings 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 0 1 2 0 1 2 0 1 2 file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 1 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 abcdefghijklmn 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 abcdefghijklmn file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 2 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 opqrstuvwxyz abcdefghij opqrstuvwxyz abcdefghij file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 3 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 122 123 124 125 126 127 klmnopqrstuvwxz µ klmnopqrstuvwxz then the numbers from 0128 to 0255 notice the leading zero i had problems with the width of the third column in the following table now it looks ok thanks to hans rathje html is tricky ascii-number common characters in windows symbol wingdings 0128 file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 4 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 0129 0130 0131 0132 0133 0134 0135 0136 0137 0138 0139 0140 0141 0142 0143 0144 0145 0146 0147 0148 0149 0150 0151 0152 0153 0154 0155 0156 · s oe · z · · · ­ tm s oe · s oe · z · · · ­ tm s oe file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 5 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 0157 0158 0159 0160 0161 0162 0163 0164 0165 0166 0167 0168 0169 0170 0171 0172 0173 0174 0175 0176 0177 0178 0179 0180 0181 0182 0183 0184 · z y · z y ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ° ± × · ÷ ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 6 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 0185 0186 0187 0188 0189 0190 0191 0192 0193 0194 0195 0196 0197 0198 0199 0200 0201 0202 0203 0204 0205 0206 0207 0208 0209 0210 0211 0212 ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô ® © tm ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 7 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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omdata2 0213 0214 0215 0216 0217 0218 0219 0220 0221 0222 0223 0224 0225 0226 0227 0228 0229 0230 0231 0232 0233 0234 0235 0236 0237 0238 0239 0240 Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ¬ ® © tm Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð file e education/click learn/module1b.htm 8 of 9 [4/15/1999 6:15:04 am]

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