What's Up

     Ever since Terry upgraded his computer, we have had some nice,
extra parts lying around; namely a 486 DX4 100 motherboard and
CPU, 2MB VESA video card, and a dual ported VESA IDE card. Since
that time, we've been looking around at computer flea markets to
make up the rest. So, I thought it might be interesting to talk about the
individual parts that all go together to make a whole, working
computer.

     First of all, you need a CPU (Central Processing Unit). This is the
actual brain of the computer. It is responsible for moving all of the
data around and performing all of the operations on that data. In the
PC world, we have 386s, 486s, Pentiums, and Pentium Pros;
presented here in order of speed, ability, and cost. They very greatly!
386s are nearly worthless by todays standards. A 486 DX2 66 is
about as slow of a CPU as you would want to deal with. The speed of
a CPU is rated as a clock frequency in Megahertz But, each series of
CPU can not be directly compared in speed with another. A 486 DX4
100 is not as fast as a Pentium 100.

     Now you need a matching motherboard to put your new CPU
into. A motherboard is a printed circuit board made out of fiberglass.
It's about the size of a piece of notebook paper and a bit less than 1/8
inch thick. It provides a physical backbone for the system. It has
places to install the CPU, the RAM, all of the peripheral cards and the
keyboard. Plus it provides the initial program to get the system
started; called the BIOS (basic input output system). It will probably
also contain cache memory which sits between your CPU and RAM
and acts to speed things up.

     A box to put it in is always nice, and it also provides a power
supply that converts AC from your outlet to a variety of different
voltages that your computer needs.

     RAM (random access memory) plugs right into the motherboard.
It is the thinking workspace for the CPU. It's like a chalk board that
the CPU uses to keep track of all that it is doing. it is also volatile;
meaning that when you turn of the electricity to the system, it is
blanked out. The more of it you have the better your CPU will
perform. It is measured in the number of memory locations it
contains; usually in Megabytes (1MB is 2 to the 20th or 1,048,576
bytes). Don't even think about running Windows95 with less than
8MB. 32MB is a nice amount to have.

     A hard drive is a memory storage device that is semipermanent.
This is where all of your programs and data files are kept. They are
often hundreds of Megabytes or even Gigabytes (thousands of
Megabytes) in size. Whatever you store there will (hopefully) be there
after you have turned the computer off and then back on again.