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BIOS/CMOS

BIOS-The BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) is a chip located on the motherboard, which handles all the startup routines necessary to get the computer running. In most PCs the BIOS will have 4 main functions: POST - Test computer hardware insuring hardware is properly functioning before starting process of loading Operating System. Additional information on the POST can be found our POST / Beep Codes page. Bootstrap Loader - Process of locating the operating system. If capable Operating system located BIOS will pass the control to it BIOS - Software / Drivers which interfaces between the operating system and your hardware when running DOS or Windows you are using complete BIOS support CMOS Setup - Configuration program. Which allows you to configure hardware settings including system settings such as computer passwords, time, and date? Computer hardware are divided into 3 parts BIOS manufacturers: American Megatrends, Phoenix, and Award CMOS - Stores around 64K of Programming Short for complementary metal oxide semiconductor. Pronounced see-moss, CMOS is a widely used type of semiconductor. CMOS semiconductors use both NMOS (negative polarity) and PMOS (positive polarity) circuits. Since only one of the circuit types is on at any given time, CMOS chips require less power than chips using just one type of transistor. This makes them particularly attractive for use in battery-powered devices, such as portable computers. Personal computers also contain a small amount of battery-powered CMOS memory to hold the date, time, and system setup parameters. How to enter a typical CMOS setup: When PC boots up you will be told to press a key to get to setup: Award (DEL) Phoenix (F2) American Megatrends (CTRL+ESC) Others (F1, F10, ESC)
Note: some new motherboard designs allow access to the CMOS setup to be disabled through a motherboard jumper. If you cannot access the setup using the proper key commands stated above check your motherboard settings to see if the access has been disabled. Special Thanks to American Megatrends, Award and Phoenix

BUS
A bus is a set of signal pathways that allow information to travel between components inside or outside of a computer. Types of Bus External bus or Expansion bus allows the CPU to talk to the other devices in the computer and vice versa. It is called that because it's external to the CPU. Address bus allows the CPU to talk to a device. It will select the particular memory address that the device is using and use the address bus to write to that particular address. Data bus allows the device to send information back to the CPU Types of Expansion Buses ISA Introduced by IBM, ISA or Industry Standard Architecture was originally an 8-bit bus and later expanded to a 16-bit bus in 1984. When this bus was originally released it was a proprietary bus, which allowed only IBM to

create peripherals and the actual interface. Later however in the early 1980's the bus was being created by other clone manufacturers. This is still in use because it's cheap and for backwards compatibility

16bit ISA Card

16bit ISA Slot PCI Introduced by Intel in 1992, PCI is short for Peripheral Component Interconnect and is a 32-bit or 64-bit expansion bus. The PCI bus is the most popular expansion bus use in today's computers

PCI Card

PCI Slot AGP Introduced by Intel in 1997, AGP or Advanced Graphic Port is a 32-bit bus or 64-bit bus designed for the high demands of 3-D graphics. AGP has a direct line to the computers memory which allows 3-D elements to be stored in the system memory instead of the video memory. AGP is one of the fastest expansion bus in use but its only for video or graphics environment.

AGP Card

AGP Slot

Expansion Bus Chart: Type of Bus Bits Wide Clock Speed Transfer Speed

ISA ISA PCI (Client) PCI (Server) AGP 1x AGP 2x AGP 4x AGP 8x AGP 8x (high-end)

8 bit 16 bit 32 bit 64 bit 32 bit 32 bit 32 bit 32 bit 64 bit

4.77 MHz 8.33 MHz 33MHz 66MHz 66MHz 66MHz 66MHz 66MHz 66MHz

2.38MB/s 8MB/s 133MB/s 266MB/s 266MB/s 533MB/s 1,066MB/s 2,133MB/s 4,266MB/s

Bus Mastering-Ability of bus device to bypass the CPU can be set at the CMOS setup Other Buses USB USB or Universal Serial Bus is an external bus that most popular form of bus use today USB is hot swappable USB can daisy chain up to 127 devices USB Speeds USB 1.0 supports 1.5Mbps USB 1.1 supports 12Mbps USB 2.0 supports up to 480Mbps

USB_A Connector

USB_B Connector

AMR Released September 8, 1998, AMR is short for Audio/Modem Riser. AMR allows an OEM to create one card that has the functionality of either Modem or Audio or both Audio and Modem on one card. This new specification allows for the motherboard to be manufactured at a lower cost and free up industry standard expansion slots in the system for other additional plug-in peripherals.

AMR Slot

CNR Introduced by Intel February 7, 2000, CNR is short for Communication and Network Riser and is a specification that supports audio,modem USB and Local Area Networking interfaces of core logic chipsets.

CNR Slot

PCI-X PCI-X is a high performance bus that is designed to meet the increased I/O demands of technologies such as Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet and Ultra3 SCSI.

PCI-X card

PCI-X

Type of Bus PCI-X (v1) PCI-X (v1) PCI-X (v1)

Bits Wide 64bit 64bit 64bit

Clock Speed 66MHz * 8 = 100MHz * 8 = 133MHz * 8 =

Transfer Speed 533MB/s 800MB/s 1066MB/s

PCI Express A high speed serial I/O interconnect standard being used for high speed connection it will eventually replace the PCI standards

PCI-e Card

PCI-Express Lane Widths x1 x2 x4 x8 x16 x32 (new) Peak unidirectional bandwidth 250MB/s 500MB/s 1GB/s 2GB/s 4GB/s 8GB/s Peak full duplex bandwidth 500MB/s 1GB/s 2GB/s 4GB/s 8GB/s 16GB/s

Laptop Buses PCMCIA or PC Card Personal Computer memory card international association is a type of bus use for laptops. There are different types of cards and you primarily slide in the card in a PC card slot of a laptop.

Type II PCMCIA Card


PC Card Types Type I Type II Type III Measurement 3.3mm 5.0mm 10.5mm Usage Flash Memory USB/NIC/Wireless Hard Drive

PCMCIA cards supports 16 or 32 bit bus width Express Card is the newest form of card you insert in newer laptops

Special Thanks to nVidia, Linksys, ATI and Intel

COMPUTER CASES
Types of Form Factors: AT Advance Technology (older model) ATX Advance Technology Extended (most popular type of computer case use today) BTX Balance Technology Extended (newest form factor known as the cooling case) SFF Small Form Factor (the smallest form factor when it comes to computer cases) 4 types of Computer Cases:

Tower Case (Full, Midi and Mini)


These cases usually sport up to multiple drive bays, and as a result, are the most expensive computer cases in the market. There is actually a middle-ground tower, called the midi, which can host 4-5 drive bays, but some manufacturers dont usually separate the two types. Tower cases are differentiated by the number of drive bays that they support. Mini towers have three drive bays, though the number may be different, depending on the company or store that you buy your case from.

Desktop Case
This type of case in which the monitor sits on top of the case has the fewest alternative available on the market. But even with proliferation of Tower Cases, some computers are still based on this type.

Portable Case
This type of case is usually the lightest and the most portable in the market. Commonly use by Notebooks, Laptops, Tablet PC Case, and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) such as a palm pilot and blackberry.

All-In-One-Case
This type of case is very popular with Apple computers, it is slim and cool looking, and the only drawback of course is if some component breaks inside your kind out of luck.

CD/DVD ROM
COMPACT DISKS Known by its abbreviation, CD, a compact disc is a polycarbonate with one or more metal layers capable of storing digital information. The most prevalent types of compact discs are those used by the music industry to store digital recordings and CD-ROMs used to store computer data. Both of these types of compact disc are read-only, which means that once the data has been recorded onto them, they can only be read, or played. Another type of compact disc, called CD-Rs and CD_RWs, can have their data erased and overwritten by new data. Currently, erasable optical storage is too slow to be used as a computer's main storage facility, but as the speed improves and the cost comes down, optical storage devices are becoming a popular alternative to tape systems as a backup method.

CD Manufacturers include Plextor, Sony, Pioneer, Toshiba and Samsung

Steps to install a CD ROM, CD-R, CD-RW or DVD Connect CD ROM device and set jumpers to slave if hard drive is present in a daisy chain environment if by itself in a single cable install jumpers and set to master. Attach 40-pin ribbon cable (make sure pin1 is closest to Molex connector) in IDE controllers found on the motherboard Attach Molex connector for power Attach audio cable from sound card to back of CD ROM Go to CMOS and set it to auto or CD ROM detection

CD ROM speeds 1x * 150KBps (Whatever the speed in X times 150) 16x - 2400 KBps 24x - 2600 KBps 32x - 4800 KBps 40x - 6000 KBps 48x - 7200 KBps 52x - 7800 KBps 60x - 9000 KBps 72x - 10800 KBps CD-R have two speeds that matter: the record speed and the read speed 16 x 32

CD-RW have three speeds that matter: the write speed, rewrite speed and read speed 12 x 10 x 32 48 x 16 x 48 CD R technology media you can record once good for copying permanent data such as music CD RW technology lets you rewrite information CD holds about 650MB (74 minutes) or 700MB (80 minutes) ATAPI - ATA Packet Interface is the protocol that lets a CD/DVD device connect to an IDE controller SCSI CD ROM - Give CD ROM a unique ID and if its at the end of the chain terminate it (load SCSI driver in BIOS) CD ROM Drivers (your CD is going to need drivers in order to function) DOS Device Drivers DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\SCSI\ASPI2DOS.SYS DEVICE=C:\SCSI\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD Windows 95 Device Drivers DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=A:\ASPI2DOS.SYS DEVICE=A:\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD ATAPI DOS DRIVERS DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=A:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001 MSCDEX Once you load the device driver in the CONFIG.SYS file you then need to place the Microsoft's MSCDEX.EXE program in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. MSCDEX is short for Microsoft CD ROM extension. Example if CONFIG.SYS has line like this DEVICE=C:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001 in AUTOEXEC.BAT line must match this MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 the D: line must match Windows 9x and Windows 2000 CD ROM drivers CDFS - CD Files System Driver part of the IFS just load it in the device manager and its protected mode

DVD - Short for digital versatile disc or digital video disc, a new type of CD-ROM that holds a minimum of 4.7GB (gigabytes), enough for a full-length movie. The DVD specification supports disks with capacities of from 4.7GB to 17GB and access rates of 600KBps to 1.3 MBps. One of the best features of DVD drives is that they are backward compatible with CD-ROMs. This means that DVD players can play old CD-ROMs, CD-I disks, and video CDs, as well as new DVD-ROMs. Newer DVD players can also read CD-R disks.

DVD uses MPEG-2 to compress video data

DVD version

Type of DVD DVD -5 DVD - 9 DVD - 10 DVD - 18

Capacity 4.7 GB 8.54 GB 9.4 GB 17.08 GB

Layer Sides Single-sided/Single-layer Single-sided/Double-layer Double-sided/Single-layer Double-sided/Double-layer

Hours 2 4 4.5 8

New Generation of DVD


New Generation DVD Blu Ray DVD HD DVD Capacity 25-50GB 15-30GB

DVD speeds 1x * 1350KBps (Whatever the speed in X times 1350) DVD Standard DVD-ROM DVD-R DVD-R Dual Layer (DL) DVD-RW DVD+R DVD+R Double Layer (DL) DVD+RW DVD-RAM CD/DVD Troubleshooting Description Read Only Memory compatible with CD's DVD Recordable DVD Recordable in two layers Rewriteable DVD Competes with DVD-R DVD Recordable in two layers Rewriteable DVD which uses DVD+R technology Recordable and erasable stored in cartridges

Set to Auto Detection in BIOS/CMOS Use molex for power cable attachment where pin 1 should be closest to power connector other end of cable should pin 1 match with IDE controller Set master and slave settings Bypass CD autorun hold SHIFT key Stuck CD use a paper clip or a pin to auto eject it To clean a CD make sure its center out or use a CD cleaner Make sure the CD ROM drivers are loaded Buffer underrun - the inability of a source device to keep a burner loaded with data, creates more coasters-that is improperly burned and therefore useless CDs and DVDs than any single problem CD burning software the most popular are made by Nero and Easy CD creator Caring for CD/DVD and Disks Hold disks by edge Don't paste paper on surface of disk You can label a disk using a felt-tip pen. Do not label a DVD if both sides hold data. Don't leave disk in contact with heat or direct sunlight The CD/DVD tray is not a coffee holder :)

CPU
CPU-Central Processing Unit, The CPU is the brain of the computer. Sometimes referred to simply as the processor or central processor, the CPU is where most calculations take place. In terms of computing power, the CPU is the most important element of a computer system. The two biggest manufacturers of PC CPU chips are those made by Intel and AMD other CPU makers include Motorola, Via, and Cyrix

Central Processing Unit (The Brain of the Computer)

Two typical components of a CPU are: The arithmetic logic unit (ALU), which performs arithmetic and logical operations The control unit, which extracts instructions from memory and decodes and executes them, is calling on the ALU when necessary. CPU Terminology Clock speed: Given in megahertz (MHz) or higher (GHz), the clock speed determines how many instructions per second the processor can execute. Also called clock rate, the speed at which a microprocessor executes instructions. Every computer contains an internal clock that regulates the rate at which instructions are executed and synchronizes all the various computer components. The CPU requires a fixed number of clock ticks (or clock cycles) to execute each instruction. The faster the clock, the more instructions the CPU can execute per second. Clock speeds are expressed in megahertz (MHz), 1 MHz being equal to 1 million cycles per second. 1 MHz = 1 million clock cycle 1 GHz = 1 billion clock cycle Bus Speed 32 vs. 64 bit System Bus How Fast a CPU can send information thru a bus path System Bus: The bus that connects the CPU to main memory As PC microprocessors have become faster and faster, the system bus has come under increased scrutiny as one of the chief bottlenecks in modern PCs. With the advent of the Pentium microprocessor, the older system bus speed of 33 MHz was doubled to 66 MHz. But microprocessor speeds raced ahead to over 300 MHz. This meant that system designers needed to insert up to 5 wait states between each memory access. In cases, the higher the value, the more powerful the CPU For example, a 32-bit microprocessor that runs at 50MHz is more powerful than a 16-bit microprocessor that runs at 25MHz Address Bus: Refers to the wires that carry specific addresses to and from the processor. Cache: Frequently stored memory, most older CPU's have an L1 internal cache built in with an L2 external cache support chips. Newer CPU's like the pentium IV have and L1 and L2 cache built in with a L3 cache Cache is a very fast memory that is used to hold data and instructions VRM (Voltage Regulator Mode) Is the circuitry that sends standard level voltage to the CPU RISC vs. CISC Reduce Instruction Set Computing vs. Complex Instruction Set Computing Math Co Processor Ability of a CPU to perform math functions and advance calculations Cooling Mechanism Devices use to cool a CPU (FAN, Heat Sink and Liquid Cooling) also thermal paste Overclocking Making a CPU run faster than it should Front Side vs. Backside Bus How the CPU communicates with the memory and the cache

Hyperthreading Is a technology developed by Intel that acts as two processors Multicore or Dual Core Has the capability to act as separate processor in the same CPU Instruction set: The set of instructions that the microprocessor can execute. Bandwidth: The number of bits processed in a single instruction. Pipelining - Allows a new instruction to start processing while a current instruction is still being processed. Branch Prediction - A technique that attempts to infer the proper address of the next instruction while knowing only the current one. Superscalar execution - Adding one more execution engine in a CPU Dynamic execution - Allows the CPU to evaluate the programs's flow and choose the best order in which to process the instructions Registers: Temporary storage areas that hold data before and after processing by the ALU. It similar to a work table use by the CPU Computer Packages, Slots and Sockets SEC- Single Edge Cartridge a new CPU package that is slightly bigger with a built in fan that goes into a SLOT 1 or SLOT A socket.

AMD Athlon SEC

SLOT 1 - The form factor for Intel's Pentium II processors The Slot 1 package replaces the Socket 7 and Socket 8 form factors used by previous Pentium processors. Slot 1 is a 242-contact daughter card slot that accepts a microprocessor packaged as a Single Edge Contact (SEC) cartridge. A motherboard can have one or two Slot 1s. Some Pentium III and Celeron also use SLOT 1. SLOT A - Similar to Intel's Slot 1 but used for AMD Athlons SLOT 2 Slot 2 is a 330-contact use by Intel Pentium II, III XEON found mostly on server computers

PGA-Short for pin grid array, a type of chip package in which the connecting pins is located on the bottom in concentric squares. PGA chips are particularly good for chips that have many pins, such as modern microprocessors. They go into different types of CPU sockets. Different types of PGA SPGA: Staggered Pin Grid Array BCPGA: Ball Chip Pin Grid Array FCPGA: Flip Chip Pin Grid Array CPGA: Ceramic Pin Grid Array BPGA-Ball Pin Grid Array

ZIF - Zero insertion force, a chip socket that allows you to insert and remove a chip without special tools. Socket - A female connector where a CPU connects

Note * PGA and LGA fits into a socket and SEC packages fits into a slot Other CPU packages include the following: PAC - Pin Array Cartridge (Use in Itanium CPU's)

LGA - Land Grid Array (Newer technology replacing PGA) Use grid instead of pins

CPU CHART Intel CPU Chart

AMD CPU Chart

CPU Troubleshooting

Problems with heat (cooling mechanism FAN, Heat Sink and Liquid Cooling) 5 Minute shut down (CPU is overheating) Listen for fan for breakdown and weird unusual noises Computer won't start Computer is acting erratic Keep air case tight CPU Compatibility (look at chart) Overclocking (make sure you have the proper cooling mechanism to support this or you will damage your CPU) When installing CPU be careful don't bend or break pins Match PGA to Socket (ZIF) and SEC to Slot ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) Match Pin 1 to the socket or look for notches when installing CPU Avoid ESD by grounding one's self Make sure CPU use the proper voltages CPU Installation CPU package must match pin 1 with CPU Socket Put thermal compound on CPU and install proper cooling mechanism (Fan, Heat Sink or Liquid) CPU SEC slide in CPU slot and install proper cooling mechanism (Fan, Heat Sink or Liquid)

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