A lot of people regard a computer as something of a black box that is way too complicated to understand. This need not be so. If you take away the jargon, it simply handles numbers at a very fast speed. Everything in a computer is represented by a number.

 

If you look at the picture above, you can see the inside of a typical standard computer. The big circuit board on the left is known as the motherboard. This is where all of the parts plug into, very much like a construction set. On the right, is where most of the other components go.

 

When you switch it on, the CPU (top left) gets information that tells it what to do from the memory from the MEMORY SLOTS (top middle). This information has been loaded from the HARD DRIVE (bottom right). This information is called a program, and consists of a list of numbers.

 

The CPU simply takes the numbers one by one, looks them up on an internal list, and does what task is assigned to that number. If the CPU is told to add one number to another, then that is what it will do. Other tasks include putting something on the screen, looking at what is being typed in on the keyboard, playing a sound, doing some calculations, or saving the result of some calculations back into its MEMORY so that it can be used later.

 

Thus the CPU is the main man, getting information, manipulating it, and saving it. This information can be used as just data, or translated into video and sound. The only catch, is that any information stored in MEMORY will be lost when the computer is turned off. This is a limitation of the computers current design.

 

To be stored long term, it must be saved on something that doesn’t lose information when you switch it off. The FLOPPY DRIVE can store a little bit of information, slowly, on a removable floppy disk. The HARD DRIVE can store a lot of information, very quickly. To store a large amount of information on something you can remove, you save it on an optical disk called a CD or DVD. On the top right, you can see where the CD-ROM drive is. This reads cd’s.

 

On most computers, all of the main functions are built in to the motherboard. Everything plugs in to it. All of the connecting cables and the power supply have been removed for clarity.

 

Externally, you would plug in the keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, printer, power cable, and any other accessories. Normally computers are used to do office work, a bit of light games, and some internet browsing.

 

Suppose you want to use it for something more demanding, like video editing, or playing advanced games with a lot of fancy graphics and sound? What you do is change some of the components. If you need better graphics, you add a better graphics card, plugging it in to the AGP SLOT (the latest computers use a PCI-Express slot instead – same idea, different connection). If you wanted better sound, you would plug a new sound card in to one of the PCI-SLOTS. Suppose you wanted the computer to run faster. You can add more memory to the MEMORY SLOTS, or even add a faster CPU.

 

We will come to your premises, and give you any tuition on subjects that we cover. Give us a call for more details of these. A popular one is our ‘self build’ tuition where we will explain and let you try taking apart one of our demo computers and rebuilding it. There is no better way to gain experience and understanding than by doing!

People learn in different ways, at different speeds, by different methods. If you do have an interest, see what areas appeal to you, and try different approaches. Some areas run free courses. Some computer magazines have excellent tutorials. Which magazine have a special promotion on at the moment. The internet gives you access to an enormous range of information, including google, Wikipaedia, and videos on you tube.