Hardware Tutorial Objectives

Introduction.

This tutorial will provide you with information to provide a very basic understanding of a Personal Computer (PC) hardware and some information about troubleshooting and correcting problems. Much of my material was gleaned from two texts (see credits) and my experience.
  1. OBJECTIVE:

    This tutorial is designed to provide the student with an entry level understanding of the basic composition of a PC hardware components.

  2. INTERMEDIATE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    At the completion of this tutorial, YOU, the student, hopefully, will be able to perform the following tasks:

    1. Define a the common components of a PC.

    2. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of various components of a PC.

    3. Describe the purpose of a "BUS" on a motherboard.

    4. List and Describe the purpose of various types of PC memory.

    5. Describe the purpose of device drivers.

    6. List and describe 5 different types of storage devices.

    7. List and describe at least 4 types of memory.

    8. Describe what you will (might) need to install a hardware device on a PC.

    9. Describe why "pipelining and superscalar" capabilities may affect the actual throughput of a computer more than the CPU clock speed.

    10. Describe lots of stuff about PCs models and vendors.

    11. Describe why you might want to use a "JAZZ" drive.

    12. Describe why MMX might be useful to you.

  3. SUPPLEMENTAL READING:

    Winn L. Rosch Hardware Bible, Third Edition, SAMS Publishers, 1994, and later versions.

    PC Definitions and Background