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What's Inside?
A computer, in many ways, is like a
car.
A car has an engine. So does a computer. But the engine of
a computer isn't called an "engine", its called a "processor".
The more RPM's the engine produces, the faster the car goes. The more MHz
("mega-hertz") a processor is able to run at, the faster your computer
runs. For instance, a 500Mhz processor is faster than a 400Mhz processor.
(There is usually a fan connected to the processor because it gets very hot. So if
you open up your computer for any reason, turn the computer off for a while to let it cool
down, just as a precaution.)
A car has pedals and a steering wheel. A computer has a mouse and
a keyboard. Both sets of objects give instructions from humans to their respective
machines. You would have a hard time driving a car without a steering wheel, and
likewise, you could not control a computer without a mouse and a
keyboard.
A car needs an ignition to start. The computer equivalent of an
ignition is called the BIOS (stands for "basic-input-output-system"). When
you turn the key, the ignition starts the car. When you turn a computer on, the BIOS
takes charge and makes the computer "think". Without the BIOS, when you
turn on a computer it would just sit there and blink.
Most cars these days come with a radio and either a cassette tape
player or a compact disc player. These objects are almost vital to the
car. Most computers these days come with a video card and a sound card. These
objects are the computer equivalent of a radio and cassette or CD player. The video
card sends electronic information to the monitor and the sound card sends electronic
information to the speakers. You can get a better sound card or a better video card
for more money, these are like a better set of speakers.
You can now get a cell-phone installed in your car so that you can call
people while you are driving. You can also get a Modem for your computer that will
let you connect to the internet. What a modem does is changes that electronic
information (mentioned above) that the processor sends to it to sound so that it can
travel through phone lines.
Unfortunately, there are three other aspects of a computer that don't
have automotive equivalents: information storage, information input, and
expansionability.
"Information storage" refers to the "hard drive"
and "RAM" of a computer. The "hard drive" is where all of the
information you aren't currently using is stored. The size of a hard drive
is measured in "bytes", sometimes given the prefix "giga" meaning
"a billion". So a 10 gigabyte hard drive can hold 10,000,000,000
(ten-billion) bytes of electronic information. The "RAM" (no, not the
animal, "random-access-memory") is where the information you are currently
using is stored. This is also measured in bytes and most of the time with the prefix
"mega" meaning "a million". So 64 megabytes of RAM means that
the RAM can hold 64,000,000 (sixty-four-million) bytes of electronic information at any
given time.
"Information input" refers to the CD-ROM
("compact-disc-read-only-memory") drive and the floppy disc drive. Compact
discs and floppy disks (called floppy since the early days of computers, when floppy disks
were actually "floppy") can store information just as a hard drive can but the
difference is that these mediums are removable. You can put a CD in the CD drive,
take it out, put a different one in, etc. The computer gets the information it needs
to run programs off of compact discs and floppy disks.
And, finally, "expansionability" refers to the
"slots" inside the computer. You can put various cards (like video cards
and sound cards) inside these slots to increase your computer's versatility.
And, by the way, all these components are on what's called the
"motherboard". The motherboard is more or less the frame of the car, where
everything is contained.
J.
Brunelle
E-Mail Me
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