Computer+Hardware

Justin Beers
Computer Hardware is the components of the inside of your computer. It's what makes the computer fuction and do everything you want it to do. People usually don't know much about the inside of their computer but here are the components of your computer hardware.

1. Power Supply - This is one of the most important parts of the computer, its what generates the entire system.
 * Hardware Components**

2. Motherboard - This is where the core components of your computer reside. Also the components for sound, networking and more are mounted into this board. The networking component of this piece is crucial to a working computer.

3. Microprocessor - This is the brain of your computer. It performs commands and instructions and controls the operation of the computer. Memory - The RAM in your system is mounted on the motherboard. This is the part that recalls everyting you've done and allows you to save things. Drive controllers - The controllers let your hard drives work.

4. Hard disk drive - This is where your files are permanently stored on your computer.

5. CD-ROM drive - this is what reads CD's to load onto your computer. There are now read/write CD-ROM drives that let you burn CD's.

6. Floppy drive - A floppy is a small disk storage device that today typically has about 1.4 Megabytes of memory capacity. It is basically an out of date CD. Not many people still have Floppy drives.

7. Other possible file storage devices include DVD devices, Tape backup devices, and some others.

8. Monitor - This device which operates like a TV set. It displays the actions of the computer.

9. Keyboard - This is where the user enters text commands into the computer.

10.Mouse - A point and click interface for entering commands which works well in graphical environments.

Diagram of a Computer:

http://docs.us.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ws530/en/ug/html/2inside6.jpg

An interesting fact about computers is the computer on the Apollo 13 spaceshuttle, which flew in the late 60's, had the equivilant amount of ram as a modern cell phone. The size of the computer was 29.5 grams and very large. They communicated with numbers and codes. A modern cell phone that anyone carries around is more powerful than the computer on the spaceshuttle.

Materials needed if u wanted to build your own computer:


 * PC Case
 * Floppy Disk Drive
 * Hard Drive
 * CD-ROM Drive
 * Processor
 * Processor Cooling Fan
 * Motherboard
 * Memory Modules
 * Power Supply
 * Video Card
 * Keyboard & Mouse

http://217.10.147.234/dell-cms/images2/dimen_e520_open.jpg

Computers are being used for just about anything today. For instance, they are putting a computer chip in golf balls so u can track them.

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/09/13/next_egrain3_sep13,0.jpg Here is a very good diagram of the inside of a computer. People have made there own computers and have added some cool details to them in the case of these two pictures. They've added a clear cover and put neon lighting on the inside.



This is a diagram of the motherboard of a computer. It labels the main parts of the motherboard. Here is another example of another custom changed cover but it doesn't look like any neon was added.

This is a picture of a large super comuter. They usually have these in offices to power all the computers in a large corporation.

Now there is something called a flash USB drive which is basically a miniature hardrive which you can save things on. A drive as small as this one you could save an entire powerpoint presentation on.