Module 1.1 - Hardware (Pg 2– 19)

Question 1

What do we call the very large circuit board that has many slots and connectors inside the computer casing?

Answer 1

The motherboard.

Question 2

Give the three main functions of a motherboard.

Answer 2

The motherboard provides connectors to allow other circuits (CPU, RAM, etc.) to connect to it.
It ensures that all components of the computer can communicate with one another.
It distributes power to the parts that connect to it.

Question 3

What do mean by the term modular design?

Answer 3

The term modular design refers to the fact that the computer is made up of many parts or
‘modules’ that can be added together.

Question 4

What are the three main advantages of modular design?

Answer 4

~The slots and connectors on the motherboard allow you to plug different components in and therefore you can change how your computer is configured.
~It is therefore it easy to repair the computer by replacing a broken or faulty part.
~It makes it easier to upgrade the computer by adding new parts or replacing existing ones with more powerful versions.

Question 5

What is a ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket used for?

Answer 5

It is where you connect the CPU to the motherboard.

Question 6

DIMMs.

Answer 6

Dual Inline Memory Modules
Thin rectangular electronic boards which contain banks of RAM chips, inserted to DIMM slots on the motherboard, and the means by which memory of a computer is upgraded.

Question 7

What are the advantages of DIMM slots?

Answer 7

DIMM slots allow you to add or upgrade the memory of your computer easily.

Question 8

With which hardware device would you associate a SATA connector?

Answer 8

A storage device like a hard drive.

Question 9

SATA Connectors

Answer 9

Connectors on the motherboard for attaching cables for storage devices.

Question 10

With which hardware device would you associate a VGA connector?

Answer 10

monitor.

Question 11

Expansion slots are seldom used these days. Name the two ways that are currently used to connect most devices to a computer.

Answer 11

USB or wireless.

Question 12

What would be virtually the only reason to add an expansion card to a computer these days?

Answer 12

Expansion cards are usually only used for devices that need very fast and high bandwidth data transfer, such as video cards.

Question 13

Expansion Slots

Answer 13

Slots on the motherboard for attcahing additional circuit boards in order to ‘expand’ capabillities of the computer.

Question 14

What do the numbers on PCI-Express expansion cards and slots refer to?

Answer 14

They refer to their relative speed ratings or bandwidth capacity. As usual, higher numbers imply better performance and higher cost.

Question 15

The CPU does (almost) all the work in the computer. List the four steps (of the machine cycle) it
typically goes through to carry out an instruction.

Answer 15

It fetches an instruction and data from the memory (RAM).
It decodes the instruction.
It then executes the instruction.
Finally, it transfers data back to memory.

Question 16

CPU

Answer 16

Central Processing Unit- a chip that can contain more than one ‘core’(complete processor) and which connects to the motherboard using the ZIF socket. Responsoble for all processing

Question 17

Is the CPU the only processor in a computer? Briefly motivate your answer.

Answer 17

No, it is not the only processor in a computer, for example some powerful video cards have a
processor on the video card to do some of the work.

Question 18

What is the main difference between RAM and ROM?

Answer 18

ROM holds whatever is stored in it even when the power is switched off, whereas RAM does
not.

Question 19

What does the ‘readonly’ part of ROM refer to?

Answer 19

The contents of ROM are not meant to be written to – that’s why it is called ‘Read-Only’ – you can read the instructions on it, but you can’t write to it.

Question 20

Firmware

Answer 20

Software that is permantly installe, or Hard-Code on a ROM chip, and used to control the basic operation of a device e’g printer

Question 21

Which ROM chip on the motherboard contains the lowest level of firmware?

Answer 21

The BIOS chip (Basic Input Output System).

Question 22

BIOS

Answer 22

The essential startup instructions of a computer, in ROM chips on the motherboard, and representing the lowest level of programming in firmware

Question 23

Give the four functions that the firmware of the BIOS chip performs.

Answer 23

It controls hardware at a ‘low’ level.
It provides the user with a menu or set of options to configure the computer at the lowest level
(you can change the settings stored in the CMOS).
It checks that all the important hardware (RAM, hard drive etc.) is present and working, which is called the POST (Power On SelfTest).
It locates and loads the operating system.

Question 24

Briefly explain why other devices such as printers also have firmware on a ROM chip.

Answer 24

The actual instructions that a printer understands are stored in the firmware on the ROM of the printer. The printer driver will receive a print command from the operating system and will then translate it into the commands understood by the printer that are stored in the firmware.

Question 25

Give two reasons why you would want to upgrade the firmware on a ROM chip of a device.

Answer 25

You would want to upgrade the firmware to make the device work faster (especially video
cards), or to add some new features.

Question 26

What is the name of the type of ROM which is used in most modern devices?

Answer 26

EEPROM (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory).

Question 27

What do we mean when we say we ‘flash’ a ROM chip?

Answer 27

The firmware stored on the EEPROM is erased electronically, which leads to a loss of its contents. A new ‘image’ of the contents is then written back to the EEPROM.

Question 28

Briefly explain why RAM is essential for the operation of a computer.

Answer 28

All data and instructions (programs or applications) have to be loaded into the RAM before the CPU can work with them.

Question 29

Give four of the main differences between RAM and storage, besides their function.

Answer 29

RAM is electronic and has no moving parts.
RAM is much faster than any mechanical part (like a hard drive or optical storage).
RAM is volatile because it is electronic – i.e. it loses its contents if the power supply is
interrupted or removed.
RAM is more expensive per GB than storage.

Question 30

Your friend added an extra 8 GB of RAM, but the computer only ‘sees’ the original 4 GB of RAM.
Assume that there is nothing wrong with the new memory and it has been installed correctly
and then explain what the problem and the solution to this problem might be.

Answer 30

A 32-bit operating system (such as most consumer versions of Windows) can only ‘see’ and use
4 GB of memory. It doesn’t matter if you have 32 GB of RAM on the motherboard, your
computer will only ever use 4 GB of RAM. To use more RAM, you MUST have a 64-bit operating
system.

Question 31

Which expansion slot is a video or video card plugged into?

Answer 31

It is plugged into a PCIE expansion slot on the motherboard.

Question 32

What is a GPU and what is it used for?

Answer 32

It is a dedicated graphics processor unit (GPU) on the video card which is used to work with the images it has rendered or created.

Question 33

Give two benefits which a separate video card provides, besides producing better quality images (output) that are displayed on your monitor.

Answer 33

Without a separate processor on the video card, the CPU has to do the job of the video card as
well as carrying out the instructions of the program you are running.
Without a dedicated video card, graphics software (such as video editing, photo editing, CAD,3D and games) can be very slow and unresponsive.

Question 34

Why do many laptops have a built-in (or integrated) video adapter and a video card?

Answer 34

This is so that the builtin video is used when doing normal tasks because it uses much less
power and battery life. When you start using programs that need good graphics, the laptop will
switch over to the video card.

Question 35

RAM

Answer 35

Temporary Viotile storage area for all running programs and data being processed.

Question 36

ROM

Answer 36

permanent, non viotile memory associated with Firmware; typically found in the ROM chip, which holds the startup instructions (bios) of the computer

Question 37

What is the system clock and how does it regulate the timing and speed of components’ data transmission?

Answer 37

The system clock is a very small quartz crystal that pulses at a regular frequency measured in GHz. At every pulse of the system clock, data can be transmitted from one component to the
next on the motherboard.

Question 38

How can some parts, like the CPU, work at different speeds (faster or slower) than the system clock?

Answer 38

They do this by using a technique called ‘clock multiplication’. If the system clock runs at 300MHz then a 6 x multiplier means that the CPU runs at 2.4 GHz (Gigahertz or billions of ticks per second). In the same way, slower components can use a fractional multiplier (e.g. a 0.11 multiplier will convert 300 MHz to 33 MHz).

Question 39

What is a bus in terms of data transfer in a computer?

Answer 39

A bus is a set of wires or paths used to transfer data between the parts of a computer. The
wires or paths in a bus are shared between more than one component.

Question 40

What do we mean when we say bus-style connections are ‘legacy’?

Answer 40

They are an older technology which is still used for backwards compatibility with older components, but they have generally been replaced with pointtopoint connections.

Question 41

Explain why it is critical to have a pointtopoint connection for transferring data between the CPU and the RAM.

Answer 41

It is crucial to have a pointtopoint connection because it is dedicated to transferring data and it
can operate at maximum speed without being interrupted by data for other devices. The
RAMtoCPU connection on the motherboard is the most important one because the speed with
which data is transferred between the CPU and RAM directly affects the performance of the
computer as a whole.

Question 42

If point to point connections are serial, how can we send more than one bit at a time?

Answer 42

Multiple connection lines can be added as motherboards develop to allow for a greater data
throughput.

Question 43

What is the most popular and frequently used connection option that almost every new device you can think of connects to the computer with?

Answer 43

A USB (Universal Serial Bus).

Question 44

Name two other connection options (besides USB) that have evolved to provide fast data transfer to devices.

Answer 44

Firewire and Thunderbolt.

Question 45

Plug and Play.

Answer 45

the ‘technology’ or ‘process’ whereby a device that is added to a
computer is automatically configured so that it is ‘recognised’ by the system and can communicate with the rest of the computer?

Question 46

What is a hardware interrupt or IRQ?

Answer 46

A hardware interrupt is a means whereby a device can indicate that it needs attention from the
CPU.

Question 47

Plug and Play automates the configuration process when you connect a device.
Briefly describe what happens during this process.

Answer 47

The operating system allocates an IRQ and an area of memory to the device that it can use
without conflicting with any other devices.
The operating system then checks to see if it has driver software for the device. If it finds the
driver, it loads it – otherwise it prompts the user to install the driver.

Question 48

What is the main aim of caching, irrespective of where it occurs?

Answer 48

It usually involves adding / keeping parts of a faster medium aside to hold data that reduces the
need to access a slower medium as often.

Question 49

What is cache memory?

Answer 49

It is really high speed memory in the CPU that is used to store some data that has been
accessed recently or that is likely to be used in the near future.

Question 50

Briefly explain how disk caching on a hard drive works.

Answer 50

RAM is faster than a hard drive or other storage mediums. That’s why every hard drive has a
certain amount of RAM cache built into it and it’s also why all operating systems set aside a part
of the RAM to cache data that has recently been read from disk.

Question 51

Explain how web caching works and how it speeds up access to certain web pages.

Answer 51

Web pages that have been recently accessed are stored locally on the hard drive so that they are quicker to retrieve the next time they are needed. The next time you go and visit the website the browser will check if anything on the site has changed and, if there are no changes, it will load the site from the copy in the local storage.

Question 52

What do the terms primary memory and secondary memory refer to?

Answer 52

Primary memory refers to ‘normal’ memory or RAM and secondary memory refers to storage.

Question 53

Name two commonly used external ports used to connect external hard drives.

Answer 53

USB, Firewire and Thunderbolt.

Question 54

Give three ways in which storage differs from memory, other than their functions.

Answer 54

Storage is nonvolatile or permanent.
It is very slow compared to RAM.
The cost per GB for a storage device is substantially less than the cost per GB of RAM.
Most storage devices are mechanical – i.e. they contain moving parts that are used to store
data on magnetic or optical material.

Question 55

Why are devices such as flash drives and SSDs faster and more robust than mechanical storage?

Answer 55

They use a type of EEPROM technology, which means they have no moving parts.

Question 56

A hard drive has a specification of 10000 rpm. Briefly explain what this means.

Answer 56

It means that the platters of the drive spin at a minimum of 10 000 rpm (rotations per minute).

Question 57

Why should you never move a computer (or portable hard drive) while it is on?

Answer 57

You shouldn’t move a computer whilst it is on because the heads are so close to the platters that any kind of shock or bump can cause the heads to collide with the surface of the platter. This will damage the disk and cause you to lose data.

Question 58

Internal hard drives come in two sizes – 2.5 and 3.5. What, besides their physical sizes, are the main differences between these types of drives?

Answer 58

The 3.5 drive is the standard size for drives found in desktop computers and the smaller 2.5 drives are optimised for use in laptops. The top of the range 3.5 drives are usually faster and
have a larger capacity than the top of the range 2.5 drives. You will also tend to pay more for a 1 TB (or any other size) 2.5; drive than for the same capacity 3.5 drive.

Question 59

Give three reasons why optical drives are not of as much importance as they were in the past.

Answer 59

A lot of software is now sold as direct downloads on the Internet.
Flash drives and portable hard drives are faster, easier to use and have a larger capacity than
optical storage.
Writing data to an optical drive is tedious, slow and often unreliable.

Question 60

What is the main advantage of an SSD (Solid State Drive) when compared to a conventional hard drive?

Answer 60

Speed of access.

Question 61

What are the two main disadvantages of an SSD when compared to a conventional hard drive?

Answer 61

SSDs are still very expensive and they have a much smaller capacity than conventional hard drives.

Question 62

Give one advantage and one disadvantage of a 3.5 portable hard drive when compared to a portable hard drive.

Answer 62

3.5 portable drives have a much larger capacity than 2.5 drives, but need their own power source to work (which means that you need to carry around a separate power brick for the drive). 2.5 drives get power from the computer over the USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt cable.