PC Hardware A Beginner’s Guide

E verything a computer can do for you, that is, all of its magic, is controlled by its microprocessor. At the heart of every com ...

the computer and processor will work just fine without any additional complexity. But, what if you wish to store names, dates, f ...

 Anybble(pronounced “nibble”), shown in Figure 3-2, is a 4-bit binary word. It holds the binary equivalent of the decimal value ...

Converting Decimal to Binary Here’s a quick way to convert a decimal number into a binary number: Divide the decimal number by ...

9 divided by 2 equals 4 with a remainder of 1 4 divided by 2 equals 2 with a remainder of 0 2 divided by 2 equals 1 with a rema ...

When this operation is used, which is calledanding, two bit values are combined (compared) to produce a result. For example, if ...

material that is neither a conductor nor an insulator but can be chemically altered to be either one. You may have noticed that ...

Chapter 3: Microprocessors^47 photoresist is removed, which leaves ridges of silicon diode where the mask shielded the wafer. T ...

(^48) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Storing Electricity Transistors store a bit value as electrical voltage. The amount of ele ...

Chapter 3: Microprocessors^49 activities between the different parts of a factory. It tells the other parts of the CPU how to op ...

(^50) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide CPU’s Bus System Thebus,asitrelatestothepathwaysonthecomputerandintheprocessor,carriesthev ...

 Address bus Carries the address from where data is to be read to where data is to be written.  Control bus Carries the signal ...

(^52) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Figure 3-5. The packaging on a Pentium microprocessor. Photo courtesy of Intel Corporation ...

Chapter 3: Microprocessors^53 Beginning with the 486, processors were cooled with aheat sinkorprocessor cooling fan(see Figure 3 ...

(^54) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Sockets and Slots Microprocessors are attached to the motherboard of the computer (see Cha ...

Chapter 3: Microprocessors^55  Socket 4 A 273-pin inline-layout processor connector supporting 5V Pentium 60 and Pentium 66 pro ...

(^56) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Slot Types Therearefourtypesofslotmountingsusedtoattachmicroprocessorstomotherboards:
Sl ...

Chapter 3: Microprocessors^57 The Evolution of the PC Microprocessor Other manufacturers, such as AMD, VIA Cyrix, and others, ma ...

(^58) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Intel 80386, 80386DX, and 80386SX Intel released the 16MHz 80386, commonly called the 386, ...

Chapter 3: Microprocessors^59 The 386DX The first of the 386 processors introduced by Intel was the 386DX. The 386 was a true 32 ...