IT ESSENTIALS V. 4.1 Module 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE PERSONAL COMPUTER 1.0 Introduction 1. What is information technology?

Information technology (IT) is the design, development, implementation, support, and management of computer hardware and software applications.

1.1 Explain IT Industry Certifications 1.1.1 Identify education and certifications 1.1.2 Describe the A+ Certification 2. Who developed the A+ certification program? 3. What does A+ certification signify?

4.

What does the A+ Essentials exam measure?

Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) developed the A+ Certification program. A CompTIA A+ certification, as shown in Figure 1, signifies that a candidate is a qualified PC hardware and software technician. CompTIA A+ Essentials measures the necessary competencies of an entry-level IT professional with at least 500 hours of hands-on experience in the lab or field. It tests for the fundamentals of computer technology, networking and security, as well as the communication skills and professionalism now required of all entrylevel IT professionals.

1.1.3 Describe the EUCIP certificate 5. What are the five modules of the EUCIP IT Administrator Certificate?

Module 1: PC Hardware Module 2: Operating Systems Module 3: Local Area Network and Module 4: Expert Network Use Module 5: IT Security
A computer system consists of hardware and software components. Hardware is the physical equipment such as the case, storage drives, keyboards, monitors, cables, speakers, and printers.

1.2 Describe a Computer System 6. What makes up a computer system? 7. 8. What is hardware? What are examples of hardware?

9. 10.

What is software? What does the operating system do?

The term software includes the operating system and programs. The operating system instructs the

computer how to operate. 1.3 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of cases and power supplies 11. What does the computer case do? The computer case provides protection and support for the internal components of the computer. 12. What determines the size and shape of the The size and shape of the computer case is computer case? usually determined by the motherboard and other internal components. 13. How large should the computer case be? You can select a large computer case to accommodate additional components that may be required in the future. Other users may select a smaller case that requires minimal space. In general, the computer case should be durable, easy to service, and have enough room for expansion. 14. How large should the power supply be? The power supply must provide enough power for the components that are currently installed and allow for additional components that may be added at a later time. If you choose a power supply that powers only the current components, it may be necessary to replace the power supply when other components are upgraded. 1.3.1 Describe cases 17. What are the size and layout of a case A form factor called? 18. What are the basic form factors for computer cases? What factors must be considered when choosing a case? desktop and tower. Desktop cases may be slimline or full-sized, and tower cases may be mini or full-sized

19.

The size of the motherboard The number of external or internal drive locations called bays Available space

20.

How are internal components grounded?

Internal components of the computer are grounded by attachment to the case.

The power supply, shown in Figure 1, converts alternating-current (AC) power coming from a wall outlet into direct-current (DC) power, which is a lower voltage. DC power is required for all of the components inside the computer. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) provides AC power to the computer from a

1.3.2 Describe Power Supplies 21. What does a power supply do?

22. 23.

What can protect a computer from problems caused by a change in power? What does a power invertor do?

24. 25. 26. 27.

What is a keyed connector? What is a molex connector used to connect? What does a berg connector connect? What kind of connection is used to connect the motherboard?

built-in battery by converting the DC current of the UPS battery into AC power. Keyed connectors are designed to be inserted in only one direction A Molex connector is a keyed connector used to connect to an optical drive or a hard drive. A Berg connector is a keyed connector used to connect to a floppy drive. A 20-pin or 24-pin slotted connector is used to connect to the motherboard. The 24-pin slotted connector has two rows of 12 pins each, and the 20-pin slotted connector has two rows of 10 pins each.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

What is the voltage of the yellow wire? What is the voltage of the blue wire? What is the voltage of the orange wire? What is the voltage of the red wire? What is the voltage of the white wire? What color is the ground wire? What are the four basic units of electricity?

+12V -12V +3.3V +5V -5V Black

Voltage (V) Current (I) Power (P) Resistance (R)

35. 36. 37. 38.

What is voltage? What is current? How is current measured? What is power?

Voltage is a measure of the force required to push electrons through a circuit. Current is a measure of the amount of electrons going through a circuit. Current is measured in amperes, or amps (A). Power is a measure of the pressure required to push electrons through a circuit, called voltage, multiplied by the number of electrons going through that circuit, called current

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

What is the measurement of power? What is resistance? How is resistance measured? Lower resistance allows _______ current What is Ohms Law?

Watts
Resistance is the opposition to the flow of current in a circuit.

Ohms More V = IR

increasing the current or the voltage 44. What will result in higher power? 1.4 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of internal components 1.4.1 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of motherboards The motherboard is the main printed circuit 45. What is the motherboard? board and contains the buses, or electrical pathways, found in a computer.

46. 47. 48.

What is a bus? What are other names for the motherboard? What items are on the motherboard?

buses allow data to travel between the various components that comprise a computer. A motherboard is also known as the system board, the backplane, or the main board. The motherboard accommodates the central processing unit (CPU), RAM, expansion slots, heat sink/fan assembly, BIOS chip, chipset, and the embedded wires that interconnect the motherboard components. Sockets, internal and external connectors, and various ports are also placed on the motherboard. The form factor of motherboards pertains to the size and shape of the board how individual components attach to the motherboard and the shape of the computer case. AT ATX The chipset is composed of various integrated circuits attached to the motherboard that control how system hardware interacts with the CPU and motherboard. The socket on the motherboard determines the type of CPU that can be installed.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

What does form factor refer to? What does the form factor determine? What is the most common form factor in desktop computers? What is the newer motherboard form factor? What is the chipset?

54.

What determines the type of CPU that can be installed? Northbridge and Southbridge 55. What are the two components that make up the chipset? In general, the Northbridge controls access 56. Which component controls access to the to the RAM, video card, and the speeds at Ram, video card and the speeds at which which the CPU can communicate with them. the CPU can communicate with them? The Southbridge, in most cases, allows the 57. Which component allows the CPU to CPU to communicate with the hard drives, communicate with the hard drives, sound sound card, USB ports, and other I/O ports. card, USP ports and other I/O ports? 1.4.2 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of CPUs 58. What is the brain of the computer? CPU 59. 60. Who are the most common CPU manufacturers? What is the connector that interfaces between the motherboard and the processor? What is PGA? What is ZIF? What does ZIF refer to? Intel and AMD CPU Socket

61. 62. 63.

Pin grid array Zero insertion force ZIF refers to the amount of force needed to install a CPU into the motherboard socket or slot.

64.

What is PGA architecture?

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

What is a program? What are the two major CPU architecture instruction sets? What does RISC stand for? What does CISC stand for? Which architecture takes fewer steps per operation? What is hyperthreading?

Most CPU sockets and processors in use today are built around the pin grid array (PGA) architecture, in which the pins on the underside of the processor are inserted into the socket a sequence of stored instructions
RISC and CISC

Reduced Instruction Set Computer Complex Instruction Set Computer CISC With hyperthreading, the CPU has multiple pieces of code being executed simultaneously on each pipeline. by the speed and the amount of data that it can process. cycles per second.

71. 72.

How is the power of a CPU measured? How the speed of a CPU rated?

73. 74. 75. 76.

What determines the amount of data that a CPU can process at one time? The wider the processor bus, the more ______ the processor. What size processor data bus do current processors have? What is overclocking?

depends on the size of the processor data bus Powerful Current processors have a 32-bit or a 64-bit processor data bus. Overclocking is a technique used to make a processor work at a faster speed than its original specification. No. CPU throttling is a technique used when the processor runs at less than the rated speed to conserve power or produce less heat.
MMX is a set of multimedia instructions built into Intel processors. MMX has been replaced by Streaming Single-instruction-multi-data Extensions (SSE), which is an enhancement to the instruction set. One core inside a single CPU that handles all of the processing capability.

77. 78.

Is overclocking a reliable way to improve computer performance? What is CPU throttling?

79. 80.

What is MMX? What has replaced MMX?

81. 82. 83.

What is a single core CPU? What are the most common multiple core processors? Why would you use a Quad Core CPU?

Dual, Triple, Quad

cores can process information simultaneously for enhanced software applications.

1.4.3 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of Cooling Systems

84. 85.

Electronic components generate heat. Increasing the air flow in the computer case allows more heat to be removed. 86. What makes the cooling process more A case fan, shown in Figure 1, is installed in efficient? the computer case to make the cooling process more efficient. 87. How does a water-cooling system work? A metal plate is placed over the processor and water is pumped over the top to collect the heat that the CPU creates. The water is pumped to a radiator to be cooled by the air, and then re-circulated. 1.4.4.Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of ROM and RAM Read-only memory 88. What does ROM stand for? Basic instructions for booting the computer and 89. What is stored in ROM?
loading the operating system are stored in ROM.

What causes heat? How can you remove heat?

90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

What is another name for ROM? Do ROM chips retain their contents when the computer is powered down? What are the different types of ROM? Can a PROM chip be erased or rewritten? Which h type of PROM can be erased and rewritten without having the remove the chip from the computer? What does RAM stand for? What is meant by volatile memory?

ROM is sometimes called firmware

ROM chips retain their contents even when the computer is powered down.

ROM, PROM, EPROM,EEPROM No. EEPROM

95. 96.

97.

Why would you want to have more RAM in a computer?

98.

What are the different types of RAM?

Random access memory RAM is volatile memory, which means that the contents are erased when the computer is powered off. The more RAM in a computer, the more capacity the computer has to hold and process large programs and files, as well as enhance system performance. DRAM,SRAM,FPM Memory, EDO Memory, SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, DDR2 SDRAM, DDR3 SDRAM, RDRAM EDO Memory

99.

100. 101. 102.

Which type of RAM speeds up the access time to retrieve data from memory because the CPU does not have to wait for one data access cycle to end before another begins? What are the different types of memory modules? What are the two configurations of SIMM chips? What type of DIMM chips are there?

DIP, SIMM, DIMM, RIMM, SODIMM 30-pin and 72-pin SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, DDR2 SDRAM

103. 104. 105.

What is the configuration of the RIMM modules? What is SODIMM used for? What does the speed of memory impact?

184-pin Laptops and stuff where you need to conserve space The speed of memory has a direct impact on how much data a processor can process because faster memory improves the performance of the processor. doubles the maximum bandwidth of SDRAM. SRAM is used as cache memory to store the most frequently used data. L1,L2,L3 when the data is not stored correctly in the RAM chips Nonparity, Parity, ECC

106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

What does DDR technology do? What is cache memory used for? What are the three types of cache memory? When do memory errors occur?

What are the three methods of error checking? 1.4.5 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of adapter cards Adapter cards increase the functionality of a 111. What do adapter cards do? 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. Why would you use adapter cards?
computer by adding controllers for specific devices or by replacing malfunctioning ports. Adapter cards are used to expand and customize the capability of the computer:

What does SCSI stand for? Small Computer System Interface What does RAID stand for? Redundant Array of Independent Disks What does USB stand for? Universal Serial Bus What expansion slot is used for video AGP, PCIe adapters? 117. What expansion slot is an IBM proprietary MCA 32-bit expansion slot? 118. What was used in computer systems with e A riser card LPX form factor to allow adapter cards to be installed horizontally? 1.4.6 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of storage drives 119. What do storage drives do? Storage drives, as shown in Figure 1, read or write information to magnetic or optical storage media. Floppy drive 120. What are some common types of storage Hard drive devices?
Optical drive Flash drive

121. 122. 123.

What does a floppy drive used for storage? What is the storage capacity of a floppy disk? What does the hard drive contain?

3.5-inch floppy disks 720 KB or 1.44 MB A hard drive, or hard disk drive, is a magnetic storage device that is installed

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How is the storage capacity of a hard drive measured? How is the speed of a hard drive measured? How do magnetic hard drives spin magnetic platters and drive heads? Do solid state drives (SSDs) have moving parts? How do optical drives read data on optical media? What are three types of optical drives?

125. 126.

127. 128.

inside the computer. The hard drive is used as permanent storage for data. The storage capacity of a hard drive is measured in billions of bytes, or gigabytes (GB). The speed of a hard drive is measured in revolutions per minute (RPM). Magnetic hard drives have drive motors designed to spin magnetic platters and the drive heads No Magnetic hard drives have drive motors designed to spin magnetic platters and the drive heads
Compact Disc (CD) Digital versatile Disc (DVD) Blu-ray Disc (BD)

129.

130. 131.

What is the storage capacity of a CD? What is the storage capacity of a DVD?

132.

What is the storage capacity of a BD?

700 MB DVDs have a data storage capacity of approximately 4.3 GB on a single-layer disc, and approximately 8.5 GB on a dual-layer disc. BDs have a storage capacity of 25 GB on a single-layer disc, and 50 GB on a dual-layer disc.
CD-RW DVD+/-R BD-ROM BD-R

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

Which optical media is a CD that can be recorded, erased, and re-recorded? Which optical media is a DVD that can be recorded one time? Which optical media contains pre-recorded movies, games, or software? Which optical media can record HD video and PC data storage one time? What is another name for an external flash drive? Which type of hard drive interface uses a 40-pin connector? What size connector does the SATA interface use? Which cable can be up to 2 meters in length? How many devices can a SCSI controller connect? What type of connector do SCSI interfaces

Thumb drive IDE

139. 140. 141. 142.

7-pin connector eSATA 15

50-pin, 68-pin, or 80-pin

143. 144.

use? What is RAID used for? What are the terms that describe how RAID stores data on various disks?

to store data across multiple hard disks for redundancy Parity A method used to detect data errors. Striping A method used to write data across multiple drives. Mirroring A method of storing duplicate data to a second drive.

145. 146.

What is the advantage of RAID 0? What are the advantages of RAID 5?

147.

How many drive are required for RAID 5?

Highest performance Supports multiple simultaneous reads and writes Data is written across all drives with parity Data can be rebuilt from information found on the other drives 3

1.4.7 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of internal cables a Molex power connector 148. What kind of power connector is needed for PATA drives? Berg 4-pin connector 149. What kind of power connector is needed for floppy drive? three 150. How many types of SCSI data cables are there? A narrow SCSI data cable has 50 151. What are the types of SCSI data cables?
conductors, up to seven 50-pin connectors for drives, and one 50-pin connector for the drive controller, also called the host adapter. A wide SCSI data cable has 68 conductors, up to 15 68-pin connectors for drives, and one 68-pin connector for the host adapter. An Alt-4 SCSI data cable has 80 conductors, up to 15 80-pin connectors for drives, and one 80-pin connector for the host adapter. A colored stripe on a cable identifies Pin 1 on the cable.

152.

What does a colored stripe on a cable indicate?

1.5 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of ports and cables 153. Describe a serial port. A serial port can be either a DB-9, as shown in Figure 1, or a DB-25 male connector. Serial ports transmit one bit of data at a time. 154. What is the maximum length of a serial A serial cable has a maximum length of 50 cable? feet 155. What type of connector is used for a RJ-11 connector telephone cable? 156. How many devices can a single USB port in A single USB port in a computer can support

a computer support? 157. 158. What is the transmission speed of USB 2.0? What is Firewire?

159. 160. 161.

How many devices can a single Firewire port support? What standard does Firewire us? What is the difference between 1394A and 1394B?

162.

What type of parallel connector is used for a printer?

163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175.

How much data can a parallel cable transport at one time? What is the standard for parallel cable? What is the maximum length of a parallel cable? If a single SCSI device is connected to a SCSI port, how long can the cable be? Where should SCSI devices be terminated? What is another name for a network port? What is the maximum length of a network cable? What does a PS/2 port connect? What kind of a connector does a PS/2 port use? What are three common video ports? Which video port provides analog output to a monitor? Which video port provides an uncompressed digital output to a monitor? How many cables does a RGB cable have?

up to 127 separate devices with the use of multiple USB hubs. 480 Mbps FireWire is a high-speed, hot-swappable interface that connects peripheral devices to a computer. A single FireWire port in a computer can support up to 63 devices. FireWire uses the IEEE 1394 standard and is also known as i.Link. The IEEE 1394a standard supports data rates up to 400 Mbps and cable lengths up to 15 feet (4.5 m). This standard uses a 6-pin connector or a 4-pin connector. The IEEE 1394b standard allows for a greater range of connections, including CAT5 UTP and optical fiber. The parallel connector on a printer is a standard Type B 36-pin Centronics connector. Some newer printers may use a Type C high-density 36-pin connector. Parallel ports can transmit 8 bits of data at one time use the IEEE 1284 standard. 15 feet 80 feet SCSI devices must be terminated at the endpoints of the SCSI chain. RJ-45 port, 328 feet a keyboard or a mouse to a computer. The PS/2 port is a 6-pin mini-DIN female connector. VGA, DVI, HDMI s-video DVI 3

1.6 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of input devices 176. What is an input device used for? enter data or instructions into a computer Mouse and keyboard 177. What are the two most commonly used

178.

input devices? What is a hardware device that can be used to control more than one computer using a single keyboard, monitor, and mouse What is used for biometric identification?

179.

180. What causes a touch screen to work? digitizes an image or document. 181. What does a scanner do? 182. What type of scanner reads UPC bar codes? bar code reader 1.7 Identify the names, purposes, and characteristics of output devices used to present information to the user from a 183. What is an output device used for?
computer.

A keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) switch is a hardware device that can be used to control more than one computer using a single keyboard, monitor, and mouse. fingerprints, voice recognition, or a retinal scan. pressure-sensitive transparent panel.

184. 185. 186. 187.

What are the primary output devices for a computer? What are the three types of monitors? What is the important difference between monitor types? How is the image created on the screen in CRT technology?

Monitors and projectors CRT, LCD, DLP the technology used to create an image:
Each beam directs colored phosphor on the screen that glows either red, blue, or green. Areas not struck by an electron beam do not glow. The combination of glowing and nonglowing areas creates the image on the screen.

188. 189.

Which technology is commonly used in flat panel monitors and laptops? What is the difference between active matrix and passive matrix?

LCD
Active matrix is sometimes called thin film transistor (TFT). TFT allows each pixel to be controlled, which creates very sharp color images. Passive matrix is less expensive than active matrix but does not provide the same level of image control. DLP projectors use a spinning color wheel with a microprocessor-controlled array of mirrors called a digital micromirror device (DMD). Each mirror corresponds to a specific pixel. Each mirror reflects light toward or away from the projector optics. This creates a monochromatic image of up to 1024 shades of gray in between white and black. The color wheel then adds the color data to complete the projected color image.

190.

How does DLP technology work?

191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197.

What does monitor resolution refer to? What is a pixel? What is dot pitch? Which dot pitch produces a better image? What is the contrast ratio?

level of image detail that can be reproduced.

tiny dots that comprise a screen. distance between pixels on the screen.

Low
measurement of the difference in intensity of light between the brightest point (white) and the darkest point (black). how often per second the image is rebuilt.

What is the refresh rate? Does a higher or lower refresh rate produce higher

198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204.

a better image? What is the horizontal resolution? What is the vertical resolution? What is color resolution? What is aspect ratio? What is native resolution? What is a printer? What is an all-in-one type printer?

The number of pixels in a line number of lines in a screen number of colors that can be reproduced Aspect ratio is the horizontal to vertical measurement of the viewing area of a monitor. Native resolution is the number of pixels that a monitor has.

Printers are output devices that create hard copies of computer files. designed to provide multiple services such as printing, scanning, faxing, and copying.

1.8 Explain System Resources and Their Purposes 205. What are the three common resources?

Interrupt Requests (IRQ) Input/Output (I/O) Port Addresses Direct Memory Access (DMA)

206. 207. 208. 209.

What does IRQ stand for? What does DMA stand for? What is an IRQ used for? How man IRQS are there?

210.

How is the priority of the request determined? Fill in the IRQ Chart

211.

Interrupt Requests Direct Memory Access IRQs are used by computer components to request information from the CPU. Older computers only had eight IRQs to assign to devices. Newer computers have 16 IRQs The priority of the request is determined by the IRQ number assigned to that computer component. 0 System Timer 1 Keyboard Controller 2 2nd IRQ Controller Cascade 3 Serial 2(COM2:) 4 Serial 1(COM1:) 5 Sound/Parallel 2(LPT:) 6 Floppy Drive Controller 7 Parallel 1(LPT:) 8 Real-time Clock 9 Avail. (as IRQ2 and IRQ9) 10 Available 11 Available 12 Mouse Port/Available

212.

What are I/O port addresses used for?

213. 214.

How many I/O ports are in a computer? Fill in the I/O Port Chart

215. 216.

What devices use DMA channels? How many DMA channels are there?

217.

Fill in the DMA Channel Chart

13 Math Coprocessor 14 PrimaryIDE 15 Secondary IDE Input/output (I/O) port addresses are used to communicate between devices and software. There are 65,535 I/O ports in a computer COM 1 3F8 COM 2 2F8 COM 3 3E8 COM 4 2E8 LPT 1 378 LPT 2 278 high-speed devices Older computers only had four DMA channels to assign to components. Newer computers have eight DMA channels 0 Sound 1 Sound 2 Floppy Drive Controller 3 LPT1: in ECP Mode 4 Cascade for DMA 03 5 Sound 6 Available 7 Available