Computing Hardware
The History
Tim Burners-Lee
He received a knighthood in 2004 from Queen Elizabeth II.
He is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) a group set up to oversee the development of the World Wide Web.
The First Generation
The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory, and were often enormous, taking up entire rooms. They were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great deal of electricity, generated a lot of heat, which was often the cause of malfunctions.
First generation computers relied on machine lanuage, the lowest-level programming language understood by computers, to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time. Input was based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on printouts.
The Second Generation
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of computers. The transistor was invented in 1947 but did not see widespread use in computers until the late 1950s. The transistor was far superior to the vacuum tube, allowing computers to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation predecessors. Though the transistor still generated a great deal of heat that subjected the computer to damage, it was a vast improvement over the vacuum tube. Second-generation computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts for output.
The Third Generation
The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers. Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers.
Instead of punched cards and printouts, users interacted with third generation computers through keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an operating system, which allowed the device to run many different applications at one time with a central program that monitored the memory. Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller and cheaper than their predecessors.
The Forth Generation
The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip. What in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand. The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, located all the components of the computer—from the central processing unit and memory to input/output controls—on a single chip.
In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for the home user, and in 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh. Microprocessors also moved out of the realm of desktop computers and into many areas of life as more and more everyday products began to use microprocessors.
The Fifth Generation
The First Generation
The Second Generation
The Third Generation
Alan Turing
Alan Turing was an English mathematician, wartime code-breaker and pioneer of computer science.
He was born on 23 June, 1912, in London. His father was in the Indian Civil Service and Turing's parents lived in India until his father's retirement in 1926. Turing and his brother stayed with friends and relatives in England. Turing studied mathematics at Cambridge University, and subsequently taught there, working in the burgeoning world of quantum mechanics. It was at Cambridge that he developed the proof which states that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems. This concept, also known as the Turing machine, is considered the basis for the modern theory of computation.
Inputs and Outputs
Drives
In the example shown on this page, drive A: is the floppy drive, C: is the hard disk drive, D: and E: partitions of the hard drive, and F: is the CD-ROM drive. Typically the CD-ROM drive is the last drive so in most situations the hard drive is the C: drive and a CD-ROM or other disc drive is the D: drive.
Below are some examples of different drives you could have in a computer or that may be accessible by the computer.
Types of computer drives
- Disc drives: Blu-ray, CD-R, CD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD.
- Hard drive
- Local drive
- LS120 drive aka SuperDisk
- Network drive
- RAM disk
- SSD
- Tape drive
- Virtual drive
- Zip drive
Monitors
The monitor is the piece of computer hardware that displays the video and graphics information generated by the computer through the video card.
Monitors are very similar to televisions but usually display information at a much higher resolution.
Early electronic computers were fitted with a panel of light bulbs where the state of each particular bulb would indicate the on/off state of a particular register bit inside the computer. This allowed the engineers operating the computer to monitor the internal state of the machine, so this panel of lights came to be known as the 'monitor'. As early monitors were only capable of displaying a very limited amount of information, and were very transient, they were rarely considered for programme output. Instead, a line printer was the primary output device, while the monitor was limited to keeping track of the programme's operation.
As technology developed it was realized that the output of a CRT display was more flexible than a panel of light bulbs and eventually, by giving control of what was displayed to the programme itself, the monitor itself became a powerful output device in its own right.
CPU's
The CPU is responsible for executing a sequence of stored instructions called a program. This program will take inputs from an input device, process the input in some way and output the results to an output device.
CPUs aren’t only found in desktop or laptop computers, many electronic devices now rely on them for their operation. Mobile phones, DVD players and washing machines are examples of equipment that have a CPU.
Ram/Rom
Motherboards
Alternatively referred to as the mb, mainboard, mobo, mobd, backplane board, base board, main circuit board, planar board, system board, or a logic board on Apple computers. The motherboard is a printed circuit board that is the foundation of a computer, located at the bottom of the computer case. It allocates power to the CPU, RAM, and all other computer hardware components. Most importantly, the motherboard allows hardware components to communicate with one another.
Below is a picture of the ASUS P5AD2-E motherboard with names of each major component of the motherboard. Clicking on the image below gives you a larger more detailed version of the picture below.
Raspberry Pi
Evaluation
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9/10
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