The Universal Serial Bus
In 1996 the Universal Serial Bus (USB) was developed to replace the serial and parallel ports. Today, the USB port is used to connect scanners, digital cameras, and external storage devices like CD-RW drives. More ...
The Master Boot Record (MBR)
The Master Boot Record, created when you create the first partition on the hard disk, is probably the most important data structure on the disk. It is the first sector on every disk. The location is always track (cylinder) 0, side (head) 0, and sector 1. More ...
How Does a Laptop Battery Work?
There is little difference in how a laptop battery works and how other device batteries work, except that a laptop battery is more intelligent. An electronic circuit works with the laptop hardware to manage the power that flows into the battery while recharging and the power that flows out of each cell of the battery while discharging. More ...
PC Keyboards
Today, there are many keyboard variations. Some keyboards have an integrated pointing device such as a trackball. Ergonomic keyboards are designed to be more comfortable for the hands and wrists. Regards of the variations, all keyboards, except those on notebook computers, follow the 105-key standard. More ...
How to Build Your Own PC - The Smart Way
So you think you can build your own PC? A little knowledge is a dangerous and expensive thing if it all goes wrong. This article dissects a PC build component by component illuminating the points about which you need to make wise choices. More ...
Windows Registry Basics
The Windows Registry is a database that stores information about the system, including; installed hardware and its configuration, device drivers, network settings, installed applications and their configuration, and the configuration of each user's desktop. To maintain your own computer, you will need to become familiar with the Registry. More ...
IEEE 1284 Parallel Port
The parallel port was primarily used to connect a printer to a PC. Today, the parallel port is obsolete, being replaced by the USB port. Although now obsolete, millions of parallel port printers were manufactured and no doubt many of them are still in use today. I'll briefly describe the it in this article because you may run into a question about it in the CompTIA A+ Certification Exam. More ...
CompTIA Strata Study Guide
Because many jobs in the IT field don't require the in-depth knowledge required for CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+ or CompTIA Security+ certification, CompTIA has developed the Strata certification. More ...
Basic PC Anatomy Inkjet Printers
There are two main inkjet technologies, thermal and piezo-electric. Thermal technology uses silicon wafer heating elements, Epson uses a proprietary piezo electric technology. More ...
VIA Chipsets
Via was founded in 1997. Via introduced the VP1 chipset to compete with Intel's 430 series. The VP1 offered support for EDO, BEDO and SDRAM as well as UltraDMA ahead of Intel. Today Via is one of the worlds largest chipset manufacturers. More ...
SD (Secure Digital) Memory Card Basics
SD cards come in a variety of sizes, storage capacities, and transfer speeds. This makes it confusing for users to choose the correct memory card for their products. This article touches on the SD technologies to help you get the correct SD memory card. More ...
How Hard Disks Work
A hard disk drive consists of several main components. The first is one or more thin disks that spin at anything from 3650 to 15000 RPM. The second major component is the head assembly which consists of record/playback heads mounted on arms which pivot so that the heads can be placed over any of the tracks. More ...
Plug and Play Resource Allocation
Early PCs used a bus called Industry Standard Architecture (ISA). ISA devices cannot share resources, each ISA device must have its own IRQ. In 1993, Microsoft and Intel developed Plug and Play (PnP) to solve this problem. More ...
Solid State Drive (SSD) Basics
Why is a hard disk drive so slow compared to a solid state drive and why don't they just get rid of the hard disk drive, and store everything in solid state memory? Since 2006 computer manufacturers have been producing Solid State drive based PCs. More ...
