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Hardware Troubleshooting
In
all aspects of any form of existence, there always
seems to be a need
for better understanding before one can be able
to effectively
communicate their ideas to it. Looking at a PC
in this way will help you
realize that before working on it, you need some
basics for you to
understand what problem we are having and how
we can troubleshoot this
problem. If you know all this you can very well
venture to the
advanced stuff,
otherwise read on.
Components of a computer
We will not dwell on this as I will assume that
for you to have come this
far, then you know what you are using, how about
going inside the
computer instead.
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The
system unit houses the heart of the computer.
This unit is
where the system/mother board, microprocessor
chip, disk
drives and power supply are located.
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Having
determined all that had led you to the probably
big
mistake of opening your computer, you are faced
with what
looks alien to you if it is the first time for
you to see the
entrails of a computer. The motherboard is the
main part of the
computer that everything plugs into. A typical
motherboard is a
sheet of olive green or brown fiberglass with
a myriad of thin
fold lines on it and chips stuck to it. By itself
it is just an
empty plate. It is the hardware that sits on it
that does all the
work. ON it we have the CPU, SIMM or
DIMM sockets, BIOS and
slots. The little gold lines act like roadways
of information
between all these features. The designs of motherboards
will
vary which means that we will not dwell much on
that, how
about looking at your manual for the details on
your type of
motherboard ( you do have a manual, right?).
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The
microprocessor (Central Processing Unit
- CPU)The Motherboard
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How could you have missed it? It happens to be
the most prominent
chip on your motherboard. The CPU provides the
brains
of your computer. It is a conglomeration (don't
ask) of electronic
circuits microminiaturized into a single silicon
chip (phew).
What it does is to execute program commands that
make
up e.g. a word processor or a game. What you will
not be able
to see is the chip itself. There are allot of
naming conventions
that go with the processors and each with its
own history
from the 8088 to our present Pentium III, i.e.
from the original
IBM PCs and XTs and their clones that have been
features these processors from Intel Corporation.
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Going straight to it,
RAM
(Random Access Memory) can be
considered as the "carburetor" where the data is
fed into the
microprocessor, and the hard drive is the fuel tank
where the
data is stored. RAM is determined by computer chips
that is
assembled on small circuit board called Single In-line
Memory
Modules (SIMMs), or dual in-line Memory Modules
(DIMMs) .
Electrical current has to be running through the
chips for them
to retain information. For this RAM is sometimes
called Dynamic
Memory and RAM chips are sometimes refereed to as
dynamic
RAM chips, or DRAM.
The
hard drive are generally the storage
area. A hard drive contains rotating discs
coated with
magnetically sensitive material. Tiny electromagnets
hover just
above the discs and record, read and erase data.
The magnets
are set at the end of the articulating arms, enabling
them to
swing back and forth to over over any portion of
the rotating
disc. The good thing with them is that they retain
information
even when power is off.
You
should also have a disk drive,
usually called a: drive. Disk drives store programs
or files in 3.5
inch wide cartridge that contains a rotating magnetically
coated diskette. Works in a similar way to
the hard disk. They
are commonly called floppies.
CD-ROM
drives these give access
to programs and files stored on an optical compact
disc.
CD-ROM stands for Compact Disk Read Only memory.
Which
means that it can only be read from. But as technology
advances new stuff comes out, and things change.
At the
moment there are CD-RS, CD-RWs and DVD-ROM that
seems to
be taking over the CD-ROM.
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Data needs to move from memory to the microprocessor
and for this to take place it has to travel along the
computers internal circuitry, of Data Bus. The name comes from
the circuitous route that data travels , which resembles
a bus route (hmm!). Most computers offer a PCI, Peripheral
Component Interconnect , a bus design. The
bus also includes sockets or slots for inserting adaptor cards (expansion
cards). The slots are called the expansion bus. Adapt cards
are electronic circuit board that adapt the mother board
to communicate with other devices. A drive controller
card e.g. connect the motherboard to the hard drive, diskette
drive and CD-ROM drive. Most of these come integrated in the
motherboard as chips for modern computers such that
the expansion slots are fewer and usually empty, unless
otherwise. The integrated chips will be for such devices as
the monitor and sound.
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Expansion cards are not the only way a computer connects
to the devices. Sockets on the outside of the PC -called
ports-let the computer communicate with the keyboard, mouse,printers and scanners. The types of ports are Parallel,
serial,SCSI (small Computer System Interface) and USB (Universal
Serial Bus).
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The
CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor)
retains the computer's configuration settings.
CMOS settings
information is usually stored in a memory chip
and retained by
a using small electrical charge provided by a
battery installed on
the motherboard
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The
BIOS, Basic Input/Output System usually resides
in a
series of chips. These chips are typically the
biggest chips on
the motherboard other that the CPU. Most time
they have a
sticker that says BIOS. For better understanding,
think of it
this way, if the CPU is the brain, then the BIOS
is the nervous
system. So when the brain it doing most of its
impressive stuff
that you may be prone to praising, the BIOS will
be taking care
of the behind the scene stuff, the dirty work:
such as how the
floppy disks grabs data or what happens when you
press a key
on your keyboard. Modern BIOS is stored in the
CMOS whereas
older BIOS was stored in a nonvolatile chip, often
soldered in
to the motherboard.
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Jumpers and dip switches
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Jumpers, Dip switches and CMOS re the way the
computer
gets to know what is installed on it. Dip switches
are very small
and are usually flipped with a pointed object
such as a bent
paper clip or a ball-point pen. Jumpers are small
pins on the board
with plastic and metal devices that go over the
pins. This
device is called a bridge. When the bridge
is connected to any
two pins, it completes a circuit between those
e pins thus
telling the computer what it needs to know. Getting
to know
them can be quite a torturous experience, and
it would be a
waste of time considering you have a manual
that contains
information about this. Basically they are designed
to make
your hardware more flexible by reconfiguring it
when you
change its basic setup. For example if you add
more memory
you may need to change a dip switch or jumper
to tell the
computer how much memory is present. Even better
if you
forgot your BIOS setup password or you simply
want to *hack*
into one that has a password, all you will need
do is:
* find the jumper with the words "Pw"
*
take it away
*
power the PC
*
run the setup by pressing F1 or DEL or whatever
your PC needs.(The
protection no longer works)
*
deactivate inside the setup the option password
*
power off the PC
*
returnl you jumper and close the PC (from
+ORC tutors)
Don't try nasty tricks with this one. The point
is to show you
the power of a jumper or dip switch. That it!
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