Why Does My Hard Drive Show Less Space Than the Specification?
Your hard drive may show less space than the published specifications due to a number of reasons. 1. The way size is calculated and displayed. Some computers have a non-DOS hard drive partition that is used for features such as Hibernation, or Recovery. More ...
Motherboard Basics
A motherboard, also known as a main board, is the primary circuit board inside of a computer, and is where the central processing unit (CPU), memory, expansion slots, drives, and other peripheral devices are connected. More ...
Buffered, Unbuffered, Registered Memory, What is the Difference?
Buffered and Registered memory are the same thing. The buffer is a register that resides between the system's memory controller and the RAM. The buffer is often, but not always, used to provide ECC (Error Checking and Correction). More ...
1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G Cellular Wireless Standards
The meaning of the terms 3G and 4G have been made very confusing because some wireless carriers have built new high-speed 4G networks from the ground up while other wireless carriers have chosen to doctor-up their 3G service and market it as 4G. More ...
SDRAM Types: DDR, DDR2, DDR3, DDR4
With computer memory modules, DDR stands for Double Data Rate because it performs two transfers per clock cycle, the number after DDR specifies other characteristics like latency, speed, and voltage. More ...
How a laser Printer Works
Laser printers work by using a laser beam to transfer an image to an electrically charged, photo-sensitive drum. The charge on the drum attracts toner ink, which is transferred to the paper. The primary steps in the laser printing process are listed below. More ...
PC Motherboard Expansion Cards
The expansion slots available on motherboards allow for a variety of upgrades in a computer system, but matching the appropriate card to an available slot needs to be addressed before making any purchasing decisions. The most common types of expansion cards for modern computer systems can be broken down into three formats: PCI, AGP, and PCI Express. More ...
PC Sound Circuitry
Actual physical sound is an analog phenomenon while the computer is digital. To output a sound stored on a computer disk to a speaker the sound circuit uses a digital-to-analog converter. Sound input to the computer for recording uses an analog-to-digital converter. So PC sound circuitry is primarily an AD/DA-converter or a "coder/decoder", usually shortened to "codec". More ...
The RS-232 Serial Port
The RS-232 serial port was used to connect a mouse, modem, and/or printer. The RS-232 serial port is now totally obsolete. I would be very surprised if you ever run into a PC with an RS-232 serial port except possibly in a third-world country. However, 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 ...
Introduction to Operating Systems
An operating system is software that acts as an intermediary between a computer user and the computer's applications and hardware. An operating system can be viewed as a resource allocator. Resources might be CPU time, memory space, file storage space, and input/output (I/O) devices. More ...
Hard Disc Fundamentals
This article describes the main technical fundamentals of Hard Disc Drive and its operation. I focus my attraction on the particular perspective of describing Physical and Logical view of HDD. This article also brings out the technology wise company working on this hard disc drives and this related technology. More ...
How Does the CPU Cache Work?
CPU's however use a 2 level cache system. The principles are the same. The level 1 cache is the fastest and smallest memory, level 2 cache is larger and slightly slower but still smaller and faster than the main memory. More ...
General Overview Of Motherboards
Everyone hears the term motherboard and wonders exactly what it is? The motherboard will contain connection points for your CPU (Central Processing Unit), Hard drive, RAM (Random Access Memory), Video Card, and Power Supply. More ...
Intel Chipsets
The original 4.77 Mhz 8088-based IBM PC released in 1981 was built with over 100 discrete logic chips. To lower the cost of manufacturing, the logic was integrated into a couple of chips that were used together as a set. They became referred to as a chipset. More ...
