My
experience in ICT for 19 years till date has given me an opportunity to share
my knowledge on computer Assemblage, but before I begin to explain the steps on
assembling computer system Unit to work together as complete system. I will not
forget to highlight the following:
1.
Computer definition
2.
Components of system units
DEFINITION: A computer is an electro-mechanical device or machine
that has the ability to accept, Process, retrieve and output data. This is to
tell you that computer is made up of the following:
1.
Input Devices
2.
Processing Devices
3.
Output Devices
4.
Storage Devices
THE INPUT DEVICE: The input devices are those components that we use to
issue command as well as input data in to the computer to process, examples of
these devices are mouse, Keyboard, Magnetic Pen, Mic Joystick etc.
THE PROCESSING DEVICES: The processing devices are those devices that acts as
thinking element of computer which sometimes determines the speed limit, take
for instance a man acts fast depending on the capacity of his brain: if he has
lower standard of brain capacity due to malnutrition or hereditary factor; it
will affect his/her productivity or action. As it tends to slow down the way of
does things, now the speed of a system unit is depended on the capacity of the
processing unit which is known as the micro processor. Some people call it the Arithmetic
and Logical Unit or control Unit. It has direct access to the memory of the
computer system known as RAM which
determines its speed limit.
THE OUTPUT UNITS: The output units are those units that give the visible
result or end product of the inputted data in a visual forms like hard copy and
they are Printer, Digital Video Projector, Touch Screen, Visual Display Unit or Monitor etc.
(I) THE
STORAGE DEVICES: the storage Devices
are the memories of the computer system which is divided in two Storage sections:
1.
The Internal Memories
2.
The External Storage devices
THE INTERNAL MEMORIES: They are the main memories of a computer system unit
like:
·
Read only memory (ROM)
·
Random Access Memory (RAM)
These
two memories are classified as the primary
memories of a computer system Unit. Both memories has direct connection to
the Micro Processor, which is a small chip attached to a mother Board component of a system unit.
(I)
ROM: Read Only Memory as specified comprises the
BIOS information and setting used to boot the computer system. The first
information you see as soon as you cool boot a system units from the power
button until it boots to windows are stored in the Read Only Memory chip, you cannot
manipulate the information stored here because they enable computer to function
well. Users uses the programs on the ROM to solve their own problem, they
cannot change it because it is statically coded.
(II)
RAM: The Ram
which is still the internal Memory of a computer system unit known as Random
Access Memory is where we store the information you we input in to the
computer. This is where all your works or documents prepared are stored. Any
information you did not save in this memory while you are working on computer
is lost when power goes off because it is volatile from the manufacturing. This
is where you can save and retrieve data whenever you want. Also the higher the
Ram Size become, the higher the computer system speed increases. We have two
type of RAM sitting in the Mother
Board and they are:
(A)SIMM: which means Single
In-line Memory Module: up to 32MB
(B)
DIMM: Which
mean Double In-line Memory Module: more
than 32MB till 588MB
The difference between the two sitting is that SIMM is up to 32 megabyte while is more than 32MB till 588MB
A RAM MEMORY
EXTERNAL STORAGE DEVICES: These are external storage devices known as secondary devices attached to the
mother board through the interface cards port or an interface cable which is
the IDE Cables or Ribbon used to connect the Hard disk to the Mother Board, example
of the external devices are:
(1)
Hard Disk
(2)
Floopy Disk
(3)
CD ROM/ DVD DRIVE
(4)
FLASH DRIVE
(1)
HARD DISK: A hard disk is a secondary device of a system
unit which has a magnetic platter and it is fragile in according to make. This
is why a system engineer should handle it with care, because if it falls on a
hard surface, there is tendency that it can crash immediately. It can also fail
due to continue power failure or improper shutdown of the computer system or
heavy file load. The hard disk comes in various sizes starting from 2.5 Gigabyte
to Terabyte, so this also help to determine the rating of a computer system
unit as regarding the Pentium
A TYPICAL HARD DISK DRIVE
(2)
FLOOPY DISK: I
might not discuss this device because it is outdated, due to its low memory
capacity and it is easily damaged or corrupts when in use.
(3)
CD OR DVD ROM DRIVE: The CD or DVD ROM drive is also a secondary storage
device that helps in computer hardware maintenance, this is an avenue for
installation after assembling a system unit. This is where we insert CD or DVD
disc for installation or for leisure.
A TYPICAL
DVD/CD ROM DRIVE
(4)
USB FLASH DRIVE: The USB flash Drive is used to replace the floppy disk because of its
large capacity of storage memories like 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, 8GB up to 32GB memory of
storage.
A TYPICAL
USB FLASH DRIVE USED AS BROADBAND MODEM
(5)
MOTHER BOARD: The mother board, as it is called is a circuit Board that harbours every
connection on the system unit. This is where the whole gadget is integrated to
work as one.
On the mother are
the electronic components like the resistor, transistor, transformer, Diodes
etc. which helps to distribute current to the buses in the system unit. There
are wires on the mother board called buses
and these wires on the mother board are linked to micro processor chip .We has
two types of Mother Board and they are:
·
AT
·
ATX
The AT Mother
Board has a separate one point socket for Power Supply Unity (PSU) while The ATX Mother Board has two socket ports
for Power Supply Unit Pins which are pin
8 and Pin 9. Now let us
highlights components of a mother Board:
A TYPICAL
MOTHER BOARD
MICRO PROCESSOR: Just as I said earlier, this component is attached to
the mother board, it acts as the intelligent Quotient (IQ) of a computer system
by assimilating information stored in the RAM.
The Micro Processor sitting or port on the mother board is of two types:
(i)
The Socket Type sitting or Port
(ii)
The slot Type Sitting or Port
This
is to mean that the socket of Micro Processor is the male type while the sloth
is the female. So the micro Processor act as the brain of the computer, and
without it, the computer cannot work. Attached to the back of this device is a
cooling fan. The capacities of processor chip are often expressed in word or
sizes. When I talk of word I mean the number of bits, it has 16, 32 or 64 that
the Central Processing Unit (CPU) can access at one time, The More Bits in
Word, the more powerful and the faster the computer becomes.
(II) EXPANSIONS
SLOTS: The expansion slot is a sitting
on the mother board where we
sloth expansion or interface cards like VGA (visual Graphics Adapter) cards,
Serial Cards, USB Cards, Parallel Cards etc. these expansion cards are called expansion
because it has ports attached to it. So without USB expansion Cards slot to
your mother board, you cannot have a port to plug in your USB devices like USB
flash and USB Phones. In fact without USB card on your system, you cannot have
USB plug-in connected to your system.
Now
these expansion slots on the system unit are divided into three:
(i)
PCI SLOTS (White slots)
(ii)
ISA SLOTS (Black Slots)
(iii)
AGP SLOT (Brown Slots)
(i)
PCI SLOTS: The
Peripheral Component Interconnect slot
(PCI) is an expansion slots on the mother board which provides connections
for expansion cards to the system board. The PCI is white color, you can easily
identify it when you are assembling system, the cards are slots according to
their fittings on the sitting sloth. It has a high speed of 32bit or 64 bit bus
that is over 20 times faster than ISA buses.
(ii)
ISA SLOTS: The Industrial Standard Architecture (ISA) is an expansion slot as the name
implies is expanded to 16 bits. Although too slow for many of today
application. The color of the slot on the mother board is black. It is still
widely used.
(iii)
AGP SLOT: The
Accelerated Graphic Port Slots or Port is over twice as fast as PCI bus, while
the PCI is used for a variety of
purposes, the AGP is dedicated to
the acceleration of graphics performance widely used for graphics and 3-D animation,
The AGP IS brown in color on the mother board.
The
white sloth is sometimes shorter in length and that is where we slot our
network cards or expansion card or modem. Almost all the computer we see today,
they have the entire required card called multifunctional board.
Now
having gotten to this stage, we have heard about Pentium. The Pentium is determined
by the rating of the following:
(1)
The Hard Disk
(2)
The RAM
(3)
The Micro Processor
As
a Computer Engineer, the above three component is what a system engineer will
check as the rating before purchasing
the computer may be for his company or other ICT purposes. We also have some
recent board in the market which is called GIGAPROS
Board. It has the micro Processor attached with the board, this is to mean
that you cannot separate the micro processor from the system board, if the
micro processor is damaged; you have to discard the board.
The
above description is for DESKTOP
COMPUTER, the difference between the desktop device and that of laptop are:
(1)
The laptop
components are of smaller in sizes
(2)
The laptop input
and output units are integrated together and made portable for easy mobility.
Now
the rating of computer system based on the sizes or features of micro processor
are:
·
Pentium one - 70 -235 MHz
·
Pentium two - 233 -400 MHz
·
Pentium Three - 450 - 1130 MHz
·
Pentium Four - 1200 -3000 MHz
·
Pentium Five - 1800 MHz
From
above rating, Pentium one cannot support or carry as from 20 Gigabyte of Hard Disk Drive while Pentium four can carry or
support as from 4GB to 180GB
(III)
The interface cable also known as Ribbon is of
two types:
·
IDE CABLE TYPE
·
SATA CABLE TYPE
IDE CABLE TYPE
The
IDE cable type for mother board has its head to male or female. The male type
has pins while the female type has holes. The commonly used one today is the
female type which has 34 lines of wires is used to connect floppy disk while that
of 40 lines is used to connect Hard disk drive. At the End of the Cable you
will see a red line Mark used to observe PIN1
RULE during connection to the mother board. On the IDE Port in the mother
board where this IDE Cable is plug, you will see the indication arrow of Pin 1. You will also see it written on
the end of floppy and Hard disk socket port in the mother board. You position
the red end of the cable to the indication point during connection to the
mother board. Now concerning their power, they have direct access to power.
They cannot function without that connection to power supply Unit.
SATA/ATA CABLE TYPE
On
the other hand, the SATA/ATA Cable
are the same but of different port with the same function, we have SATA 0,SATA 1,SATA3, and EXTERNAL
SATA, they have the same function which is to allow the user to enable or
disable an ATA or SATA device such as Hard Drive, CD Drive or DVD.
A TYPICAL SATA/ATA CABLE TYPE
THE POWER SUPPLY UNIT
The
power supply unit or power pack supplies electric current to different part of
computer directly or indirectly. Now what the power Supply Unit does is to
convert the AC (Alternative Current) to DC (Direct Current) and it does the
work of a transformer, it steps down the voltage to the required units to the
different parts of the system unit it is being connected. We can interchange
the wire to different part of computer like the mother board, Hard disk drive
and CD /DVD Drive,, these are the main important places we connect the Power
Supply to supply current at a very low voltage of 5 volts and 12 volts
before we proceeds to other parts like the power button which gets its own
power direct or indirect depending on the system make.
TWO TYPE OF POWER PACK:
The
two type of power pack are decided together with the type of power supply Unit
to use. We have the two as follows:
·
AT: Example PIN 8 AND PIN 9
·
ATX:
NOTE: The power Supply Unit goes together with the mother
board, the type of power pack to use is depended on the type of mother board.
The AT MOTHER BOARD goes with AT POWER
SUPPLY UNIT while ATX MOTHER BOARD
goes with ATX POWER SUPPLY UNIT
AT POWER SUPPLY UNIT
The
AT power supply unit is used for mother board which has two power socket that
receives power from two pins of power pack which are PIN 8 and Pin 9. So the pin 8 and Pin 9 of this power supply units, supply direct Current to the mother
board at a very low voltage.
ATX POWER SUPPLY UNIT
The
ATX Power Supply unit has only one connector to the mother board. So the ATX
Mother board also has a single port for power supply unit connector.
Both
ATX and AT have other two connectors known as the Molex and Berge that connects
to the DVD-ROM and Hard Disk. When connecting the power supply to the mother
board, you have to be care full or your computer will blow.
Now we are going to know steps to
assemble all these parts for them to function as a system Unit:
(1)
Absorb A skeleton
of a system unit
(2)
Never connect the
cable upside down
(3)
Never force your
mother board or drop it
(4)
Always make sure
you observe the pin 1 rule when connecting ribbons or IDE cable because
incorrectly connected missing a row of pins or a pair of pins.
(5)
Now, after
screwing the mother board to the absorbed skeleton using pad to shield the rear
side. Now we have to know how to connect the interface cable using IDE Cable or
RIBBON as a case study. The Ribbon has three connector:
(i)
The Head or
Primary master
(ii)
The Middle or
primary/secondary slave
(iii)
The Tail or
Secondary Slave
Using
the following diagram for illustration of connection of the interface cable or
IDE CABLE, it will enable you to understand how to fix IDE in the system unit
to function appropriately:
The
primary connector master goes to the
primary port while the secondary connector master goes to the
secondary port. Then the primary slave connector goes to
alternative like Hard Disk or floppy
disk altogether like the primary
connector master, the same is applicable to secondary slave.
We
can connect up to four hard disk in a computer system, the two IDE CABLE, one connecting to Primary Master Port and the other
taking the place of CD/DVD ROM Secondary
Master Port.
(6)
After this we
should ensure that the RAMS are properly slotted to the Ram sitting in the
mother Board, because if the RAM is not properly seated, the system cannot
power on rather it will be making some poor sound.
(7)
Also we should
slot the micro processor properly with the cooling fan working when powered on.
(8)
The next is the
interface cards like the VGA Cards for VGA port which goes to the monitor, USB Cards, Parallel Cards for
the printer and Scanner, Serial Cards, all these are embedded on the expansion
sloth
Now
our system is ready as soon as we finish connecting the Power pins and buttons.
Now we can connect the power supply cable already installed with the power cord
to the extension wire supported with uninterrupted
Power Supply (UPS) while we connect to the monitor through the VGA (Visual
or Video Graphic Adapter) port and cable from monitor. Now plug in the mouse
depending on the type of ports we have. We can decide to use the USB Mouse and
Keyboard which is more solid to others.
The
next is installation of Windows, Window’s Drive and Windows software. After
that the system is ready for any task.
You
can send you comment on this tutorial, you comments are welcomed:
WRITTEN/EDITED BY:
ONYIA EMEKA HARFORD
+2348186388641b
Nice write up
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