| Don't miss the Study Lab materials found on the CD accompanying this book. Each Study Lab is tailored to the individual chapters in this book, meaning that you'll quickly be able to determine which topics you understand well enough to pass the exam and which topics need more study. The Study Labs are presented in printable PDF format so that you can take them with you to study at work, on the road, or even in your car just before test time! The Absolute Minimum Here are the high points of this chapter. Read these just before you take your exam, or any time to find out what topics you need to review in more detail. -
All computers contain hardware, software, and firmware. -
There are two types of memory RAM (contents change as programs and data are loaded, created, and saved) and ROM (contents can't be changed under normal circumstances). -
Hardware subsystems such as video, drives , memory, and others are controlled by the system BIOS on the motherboard and by the operating system and its device drivers. -
The outside of the computer typically has cable connections for peripherals, drive bays for removable-media drives, the power supply, and the power switch. -
The inside of the computer contains the motherboard, add-on cards, memory modules, the processor, and internal drives (hard disk, floppy disk, and optical drives). -
The BIOS controls built-in components and displays the installed components on some systems. -
IRQs range from 0 “15 and are used to request attention from the CPU. -
I/O port addresses are used to transmit information between the system and a particular device. There are 65,535 I/O port addresses. -
DMA channels are used by ISA devices to bypass the processor for faster device-memory transfers. DMA channels range from 0 to 7. -
Memory addresses are used by devices with built-in ROM or RAM chips. -
The Windows Device Manager and Windows System Information display current hardware (IRQ, DMA, I/O port address, and memory address) usage. |
|
