Introduction to Computing Lab

Assignment on
08-10-2019
Assignment Name
(Introduction to Computer System and its Hardware
Components)
Submitted To
Sir Musharaf Hussain
Dept. of Computer science and Information Technology

Submitted By
Name: Hamza Khan
Roll#: 352343
BSCS Semester “1”
 Experiment # 01
Introduction to Computer System and its Hardware Components

Objective

To get acquainted with the basic hardware components of Workstations, their nature and purpose.

Theory

Fundamental parts of a Computer

All computer systems, no matter how small or large, have the same fundamental capabilities: i.e.
processing, storage, input and output.

The Input Units

Input unit includes devices like keyboard and mouse, which are used to take input from user.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU)

Processing unit is where these data are processed and turned into meaningful information.
Processing unit also includes temporary storage (RAM) in which the data currently being
processed are stored temporarily.

The Output Unit

To show the result of processes, to the user, output devices like monitors and printers are used.
The output on a monitor is usually called softcopy and the output on a printer is usually called
hardcopy.

In-volatile Memory/ Permanent Storage

Sometimes we may want to store our data and information permanently so that we can refer to
them again, later. For this purpose, interchangeable devices like floppy disk drives and CD-ROM
drives, or permanently installed devices like hard disks are used as permanent storage medium.

A look inside a Personal Computer

Following are the hardware components that exist almost in all PCs.
Mainboard / Motherboard
It is a microcomputer circuit board that contains slots for connecting peripherals like RAM
modules, CPU and adapter cards. Motherboards also have electronic circuitry for handling such
tasks as I/O signals from those peripheral devices. A motherboard is thebackbone of a computer
system: The power of a PC highly depends on the peripherals that its motherboard supports.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

It is the brain of a computer system. It is the component, which controls what’s going on in the
system at any moment. Other components act according to the orders of the CPU. All the current
inputs and any previously stored data are processed by the CPU to obtain meaningful
information.

Volatile Memory / Random Access Memory (RAM)

It is the primary memory of a PC. Anything in a secondary storage device (permanent storage)
that has to be processed by the CPU, must first be loaded to RAM, because there are no machine
instructions to directly access and use any data which is stored in a secondary storage medium.
RAM is a volatile memory, therefore if electricity cut or a reset should occur; all the data in
RAM are lost.

Hard Disk Drive

It is one of the most popular secondary storage devices. It is a magnetic medium that stores its
contents permanently, even in the absence of electricity power. You store your documents,
pictures, photos, songs, etc in Hard disks.

Floppy Disk Drive

It is a device into which you insert interchangeable floppy disks. Floppy disks are also magnetic
storage mediums. FDDs works much slower than Hard disks and floppy disks have much smaller
storage capacities. Floppy disks are usually used to copy some files from your PC to another PC,
vice versa.

PCI Slots

Graphics Card
This circuit board is responsible from the visual outputs that will be displayed on the monitor.
Nowadays, graphics cards have their own memory modules and processor chips, by which they
lessen the load of CPU and RAM, hence enabling us to see very detailed graphics and high
quality animations and video.
PCs are general-purpose devices that can be used in many areas of interest, and of course there
exists many other hardware components that can be added to them to increase their
functionalities. These include CD-ROM drives, sound cards, radio cards, TV cards, modem
cards, etc…

LAN Card
A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network
adapter, LAN adapter, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects
a computer to a computer network (the Internet, network printer, connecting computers together,
and so on).
Network interface controllers are commonly implemented on PCI expansion slots The Most of
the new computers have a network interface built into the motherboard.
Tasks

What type of computer system do you use personally? Identify different HW components and list
as much information as you can about computer you use (processor type, RAM and HD capacity,
type of OS.
My Computer system:

I have a Computer system with high specifications. It has core i5 7th Generation high speed
processor with 6mb Cache memory. It has 8 Gb DDR4 RAM to have Smooth processing. It has
1tb Hard drive to store vast amount of data. A 550Watt power supply. 2 extra cooling fan
maintain the temperature of pc. A 22inch high resolution 4k led. A mouse, keyboard,
headphones and high speed internet.

Processor

A processor or a “microprocessor” is small chip that resides in computers. Its basic job is to
receive input and provide the appropriate output. The central processor of a computer is also
known as the CPU, or “central processing unit”.

This processor handles all the basic system instructions, such as processing mouse and
keyboard input and running applications.

Besides the central processing unit most desktop and laptop computers also include a GPU.
This processor is specially designed for rendering graphics that are output on a monitor.

RAM

Random Access Memory (RAM) is a form of Computer memory that is used in the time of
processing. Data first comes in RAM then goes for processing.

A RAM contains multiplexing and de multiplexing circuitry, to connect the data lines to the
addressed storage for reading or writing the entry. Usually more than one bit of storage is
accessed by the same address, and Ram devices often have multiple data lines and are said to
be “8-bit” or “16-bit”, etc devices.
 In today's technology, random-access memory takes the form of integrated circuit (IC)
chips with MOS (metal-oxide-semiconductor) memory cells. RAM is normally associated
with volatile types of memory (such as DRAM modules), where stored information is lost if
power is removednon-volatile RAM has also been developed.

The two main types of volatile random-access semiconductor memory are static random-access
memory (SRAM) and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM)

OS

An Operating system (OS) is a system software that manages computer hardware software
resources, and provides common services for computer programs

For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system
acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the
application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system
calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices
that contain a computer – from cellular phones and video game consoles to web
servers and supercomputers.

Example

Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac, Linux, Blackberry, Android , Phoenix, OS X

Hard Disk

A hard disk drive (HDD is an electro-mechanical data storage device that uses magnetic
storage to store and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating disks
(platters) coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually
arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces.[2] Data is
accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or
retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage,
retaining stored data even when powered off.

The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified
in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000: a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of
1,000 gigabytes (GB; where 1 gigabyte = 1 billion bytes)

Conclusion

From this topic we have learned about the different part of computer. We learn
how they work what is the importance of every part of computer and what’s their
purpose.