COMPUTERS

Various types of optical drives are available in the market. These include CD readers, CD writers, DVD readers, DVD writers, DVD combos, BD readers, BD writers and BD combos. The specifications of an Optical Drive drives to be considered are: Supported Media Types: The optical drive must support a major part of available types of discs in the market. Examples are CD-ROM , DVD-R , DVD-ROM , CD-RW , CD-R , DVD-RAM , DVD-RW , DVD+R an d DVD+RW. Note that CD drives do not support DVD's or BD's and DVD drives do not support BD's. Also, the supported media types are different for a drive's read and write capabilities. Interface : The interface that an optical drive uses and the port that it will use to connect to the system. The interfaces have transfer speeds of their own. For example, a max. of 167 MBps for IDE, 600 MBps for SATA. But, the current technologies available for optical drives can only provide speeds that are lower than modern ...

Power Connectors and Cables

In the last post, I mentioned that the output of a PSU comprises of multiple types of power cables that are used to power up various components of a CPU. Each type of cable is designed to work perfectly with different devices. Each type of cable has its corresponding type of connector at the end. The latest revision, PCI Express 2.0 for the specifications of various connectors adds the support of 12V power rails along with 3.3V and 5V power rails. The types of connectors are: ATX 24 (20+4) pin main power cable: The 20 pins of this connector are to provide power to the motherboard including the IC's on it. It also connects to the on/off switch on the CPU with which we turn-on the computer. The additional 4 pins are to power the PCI and PCI-E expansion slots of the motherboard. 4 pin / 8 pin (12V) main cable: This cable supplies power to the processor. The 8 pin cable is used in case of multiple processors. 6 pin / 8 pin (12V) PCI-E power cable: Either the 6-pin or the 8-pin or two...

Operating Systems - the need for OS

The OS is the single most advanced and most efficient software that gets all the credit for making the computer hardware usable. The Operating System or OS is responsible for all the user friendliness of the computer. Operating Systems is the first actual software that you need to install on your computers to be able to use it, including smartphones. The functions of an OS include: Memory management Disk management File management Process management Interrupts and Networking The OS runs and makes it possible for the users to interact with the computer without any knowledge about the underlying hardware. The OS interacts with the hardware using firmwares and device drivers and the users can use the hardware using the interface of the OS, called the GUI or Graphical User Interface. A few features of modern operating systems are: GUI Multi-Threading Multi-Processing Multi-Tasking Multi-User All other softwares that we use to do our work whether for office work, playi...

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