How many of us actually know how a computer works....?

[RollinLower]

i know a small fracture of how it works. basically i know how and why some components work. i also know about binary, tough that's basically it.

i'm learning new stuff everyday just by browsing these forums tough!

[BOT Edward]

The BIOS is not an operating system. It's firmware.

My bad, not the greatest with terminology.

It is firmware written on a non-volatile ROM chip

 

EDIT: Some BIOS' are written on EPROMso they can be updated/flashed/etc

[Archimonday]

Binary is everything, turns on or off electrical connections. In language those are represented by 1's and 0's. Each one is known as a "bit"

 

A single bit can only represent two values: 0 or 1. However, with two bits:

 

x = on           no-x = off

 

[    ]    [    ] - 0

[ x ]    [   ] - 1

[   ]     [ x ] - 2

[ x ]    [ x ]  - 3

 

Thus, every possible combination of these bits being on or off can be assigned a value, and thus represent different information, for letters that is known as ASCII. Once you can represent letters, and other information the rest is history.

 

 

[evilarceus]

"It's magic, Joel, it's magic!"

[evilarceus]

I have a 247-year degree in Computer Science and Engineering, an xbone, and a $99999.99 PC.

 

Using my 247 years of experience I can tell you that consoles are much better than a $99999.99 PC. Here's why:

 

Consoles are made for gaming and therefore use AMD's SuperAPU technology that runs off of the new figi chipset. This allows the CPU/GPU combo (more commonly known as the APU) to be soldered directly to the motherboard, instead of having to use a socket. While this does make them non-upgradeable it makes it much more powerful than a socketed APU. A single $100 figi SuperAPU can outperform a $999999.99 5960X/TitanX combo because it much cheaper to produce. Using the figi chipset, SuperAPUs can also take advantage of DDR15 RAM, which is much more powerful than the platform that modern intel CPUs use, which is DDR4. A single gig of DDR15 performs as good as 128 gigs of DDR4, and is also really cheap to produce, which is another reason that makes consoles cheaper than PCs. Consoles' storage is also better than PCs because the fastest data transfer standard on PCs is NVME, while consoles use the xXxXxXxMountainDewAndDoritosxXxXxXxXx standard, which is much faster, allowing read and write speeds of up to 9999999 d/s (doritos per second).

 

Also, PC gamers say that PC gaming is cheaper because their servers for multiplayer are free to play on. That is because they are based off of outdated PC architecture. Xbox live servers are also based off of the figi SuperAPU technology and the xXxXxXxMountainDewAndDoritosxXxXxXxXx standard, which makes them much faster than PC servers, therefore being a premium service that costs extra money.

 

So, today I will be selling my $9999999.99 PC to buy a lifetime supply of Mountain Dew and Doritos. You can find me on xbox live at xXxMLG_ExploDeD117_420xXx

Mai gawd.

[Emanuel_M]

Computers work in binary 1 is on 0 is off. We use an operating system to interact with the computer.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Take CS 61C from Berkeley webcast and 6.004 from ocw.mit.edu and you'll get a pretty good idea of the basics. Alternatively the computer organization book by Patterson & Hennessey and then the computer architecture book by Hennessey & Patterson are excellent. You have to know a reasonable amount of programming to follow 61C and 6.004 will require some knowledge of circuits (see 6.002 on ocw.mit.edu), which will require a semester of electromagnetism (see 8.02 or even better 8.022 on ocw.mit.edu).

[Fgtfv567]

While I can't say oh a CPU does X operations to function and RAM uses these logic gates I can certainly explain what the purpose of various parts is and what benefits upgrading them will bring

You just explained at least 90% of this forum's user's knowledge of how a PC works

[Whorax]

I have a fairly good bit amount of basic knowledge on how things work, but I can't tell you information on how a processor does what it does, how to make a processor, etc etc same goes for how everything else in the computer works.

[Shin-Gouki]

01010101010110010110101010101101010001010111010101. 

 

[Jerakl]

Nope, you turn the PC on and the magical CPU square goes 100111001101010101010111000111010001 and boom Windows 10

 

But sometimes it screws up and we get Windows 01.

[nekomata]

Nope, you turn the PC on and the magical CPU square goes 100111001101010101010111000111010001 and boom Windows 10

So, is windows 10 windows 10 or is it windows 2?

[Ryoutarou97]

[KE2012]

As I have had to design and make a cpu I know how that works and how it communicates with other components. But I don't know the specifics about those other components, although I bet I could give a good educated guess if needed.

[Tech_Dreamer]

have a pretty decent idea but not too indepth

[Guest]

As I have had to design and make a cpu I know how that works and how it communicates with other components. But I don't know the specifics about those other components, although I bet I could give a good educated guess if needed.

 

Without Googling, and on an educated guess, briefly explain how a mechanical hard drive works? 

 

(simplest component to explain i could really think of, that and an optical drive)

[TheConverter]

[KE2012]

Without Googling, and on an educated guess, briefly explain how a mechanical hard drive works? 

 

(simplest component to explain i could really think of, that and an optical drive)

 

The question is always going to remain, can you prove I did / didn't google? But if you will accept my honesty that I actually want to see how bad my memory is and how well I can make an educated guess from what I learned.  

 

My research and design was related to the architecture of various components such as CPU architectures, the Data path (this was horrible stuff, especially when you need to save stuff to RAM or something, So we were basically given the hard portion of this as It would have taken us so long to compile the code for it we would have had to be given an additonal module or something)) and decoding machine code for use with the various components (not so bad) and RAM (Know the basics, all we needed to use was some Registers for Cache, a cheat yeah, but the CPU still worked), the hard drive is something I have looked at for my exams but a long long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) The reason being I prioritised flash over mechanical is due to the fact the platform I had to implement my architecture on for a demonstration used flash, Anyway I have looked at HDD's over my course, although it might have been as far back as my 1st year, so I may be a little rusty to say the least. 

 

The basics that I can remember from my proff goes like this.

You have the disk and the platter. The disk has tracks, so if you zoomed in with a microscope you would see that its much like a old record disk, and the platter is much like the thingy that runs the disk (Can't remember its name), however the difference is hdd's are digital (Fun fact, an old analogue record player is far better for music than any digital device due to the fact you don't need ADC's to store the info, and DAC's to play it, each of the converting process which will reduce the quality of the original signal.)

 

Anyway getting back on track...... The difference between an old record player, and a modern HDD's is the fact a HDD is digital and will only pick up a '1' or a '0' depending on the direction of a signal (cant remember if its a current dependant based system or voltage) induced in the platter. (Faraday, fuck yeah) (I can't remember if its in reverse due to how the system works though)

 

Anyway, to read, if the platter runs over a 'bit' (Can't remember the cell name thingy) and it represents a digital 1 depending on the signal that is induced. (Like I said, can't remember the directions)

 

To record I can't remember the physics behind it, but it changes the direction of the 'bit' to be the opp pole (Reversing the signal).

 

I can't remember how the hard drive determines where to save stuff on the disk though, Infact I'm not sure I learned that much. 

 

I haven't done optical disks, but think I read somewhere its how the laser is relfected or something. 

 

Time to check how close I was........ Oh, memory is pretty shit, good job I don't need to work with HDD's. 

[Guest]

 

 

The question is always going to remain, can you prove I did / didn't google? But if you will accept my honesty that I actually want to see how bad my memory is and how well I can make an educated guess from what I learned.  

 

My research and design was related to the architecture of various components such as CPU architectures, the Data path (this was horrible stuff, especially when you need to save stuff to RAM or something, So we were basically given the hard portion of this as It would have taken us so long to compile the code for it we would have had to be given an additonal module or something)) and decoding machine code for use with the various components (not so bad) and RAM (Know the basics, all we needed to use was some Registers for Cache, a cheat yeah, but the CPU still worked), the hard drive is something I have looked at for my exams but a long long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) The reason being I prioritised flash over mechanical is due to the fact the platform I had to implement my architecture on for a demonstration used flash, Anyway I have looked at HDD's over my course, although it might have been as far back as my 1st year, so I may be a little rusty to say the least. 

 

The basics that I can remember from my proff goes like this.

You have the disk and the platter. The disk has tracks, so if you zoomed in with a microscope you would see that its much like a old record disk, and the platter is much like the thingy that runs the disk (Can't remember its name), however the difference is hdd's are digital (Fun fact, an old analogue record player is far better for music than any digital device due to the fact you don't need ADC's to store the info, and DAC's to play it, each of the converting process which will reduce the quality of the original signal.)

 

Anyway getting back on track...... The difference between an old record player, and a modern HDD's is the fact a HDD is digital and will only pick up a '1' or a '0' depending on the direction of a signal (cant remember if its a current dependant based system or voltage) induced in the platter. (Faraday, fuck yeah) (I can't remember if its in reverse due to how the system works though)

 

Anyway, to read, if the platter runs over a 'bit' (Can't remember the cell name thingy) and it represents a digital 1 depending on the signal that is induced. (Like I said, can't remember the directions)

 

To record I can't remember the physics behind it, but it changes the direction of the 'bit' to be the opp pole (Reversing the signal).

 

I can't remember how the hard drive determines where to save stuff on the disk though, Infact I'm not sure I learned that much. 

 

I haven't done optical disks, but think I read somewhere its how the laser is relfected or something. 

 

Time to check how close I was........ Oh, memory is pretty shit, good job I don't need to work with HDD's. 

 

 

More comprehensive than i was expecting 

 

The write head basically being an electromagnet, which directs the magnetic field into a bit to make it a north or south field(which is what the computer reads as binary), and reverses the direction of current in the write head to reverse the direction of the magnetic field of the bit. The read head can then detect the direction of the magnetic field in the bit.

 

That's what i remember of how data is represented on the drive and put simply anyway, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on any of that  :lol:

[Trik'Stari]

I know a little bit about it, but not too in depth.

[Arty]

i would say i have a good grasp. but there is some shit that is still confusing af.

[bcredeur97]

I know how they work. If there is anything that I use daily I like to know how they work and what each component does. Helps a ton when troubleshooting. 

 

This goes for Cars, Computers, bicycles, plumbing, Air conditioning (im a bit rusty on that though lol), phones, watches, refrigerators, fans, etc. 

[Guest Johnny5g]

i do hardware wise.

[mmaatt747]

CPU is sort of the brain, RAM is the short term memory, storage is the long term, etc. I just try to equate the parts to actual human organs to get people to understand. Hahaha.

 

And the motherboard is the backbone

[NumLock21]

The system goes through a lot of commands during post before you even see the windows boot screen.