Computer Foundations

The goal of this chapter is to cover the low-level basics of how computers operate. In the following chapters of this book, we examine, in detail, how data are stored, and this chapter provides background information for those who do not have programming or operating system design experience. This chapter starts with a discussion about data and how they are organized on disk. We discuss binary versus hexadecimal values and little- and big-endian ordering. Next, we examine the boot process and code required to start a computer. Lastly, we examine hard disks and discuss their geometry, ATA commands, host protected areas, and SCSI.