Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Computer Hardware Notes

By
Qais Ahmad

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Table of Contents
HARDWARE ------------------------------------------------- ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

PARTS OF COMPUTER: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 1. MAIN BOARD, MOTHER BOARD, SYSTEM BOARD.-----------------------------------------------3 TYPES OF MOTHERBOARD:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 PLAIN MOTHERBOARDS: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 PARTS OF MOTHERBOARD: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 2. PROCESSOR -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7 COMPANIES OF PROCESSOR --------------------------------------------------------------------------------9 RAM (RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY) -----------------------------------------------------------------------9 FLOPPY DISK DRIVE (FDD) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 6. COMPUTER CASING WITH POWER SUPPLY. ----------------------------------------------------- 12 THE POWER SUPPLY: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 POWER SUPPLY FUNCTIONS AND SIGNALS -------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 PARTS OF THE POWER SUPPLY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 TYPES OF POWER SUPPLY: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 7. MOUSE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16

8. KEYBOARD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18
9. CD ROM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 TYPES OF CD ROMS:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 10. SOUND CARD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21 11. SPEAKERS. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 12. FAX MODEM CARD --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 HARD DISK DRIVE (HDD)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 25 HARD DISK CONSTRUCTION AND WORKING ------------------------------------------------------------------ 25 HARD DISK SECTOR STRUCTURES ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 14. MONITOR----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 NET WORK CARD ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 TROUBLE SHOOTING OF COMPUTER------------------------------------------------------------------ 34

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Hardware
Definition of computer hardware: Computer hardware refers to physical parts of computer that we can touch and feel them, such as monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, ram, processor etc. A computer has mainly 15 parts.

Parts of computer:
1. Main board, Mother board, System board. 2. Processor, CPU (central processing unit). 3. Ram (random access memory). 4. VGA card (video graphic adaptor), display card, graphic card. 5. Floppy disk drive. 6. Computer casing with power supply. 7. Mouse. 8. Keyboard. 9. CD rom. 10. Sound card, audio card. 11. Speakers. 12. Fax modem card. 13. Hard disk drive (HDD). 14. Network card, Ethernet card, and LAN card (local area network connection). 15. Monitor.

1. Main Board, Mother Board, System Board.

Main board is that part of computer, which makes a solid, interconnection among all of the parts of our computer in order to get work from every component of our computer which is attached to our system. Or main board is that part of computer on which we fix or attach our hardware. For example our Ram, Processor, HDD, Floppy, Sound card, VGA card etc every component, we fix on our main board then we can make a system out of these things.

Types of motherboard:
We have two types of motherboards: A. Plain motherboard B. built-in motherboard.

Plain motherboards:
Are those motherboards which had only mouse, keyboard, printer and serial ports, they dont have any VGA, sound card and LAN card on it. They were old type of motherboard and we must buy the above card and fix them on our board in its proper slots.

B. Built-in main boards:

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad These boards had VGA, Sound card and LAN card built-in from company side we dont need to buy any card and fix on board.

Types of FSB (front side bus) or Buses:

Buses are the routs or ways for data to travel on. Or buses are those complex copper structured of wires which are electronically designed for the traveling of electric charges. Or the way, which is specified for the data transmission, is called buses. Below are some of the buses types of different motherboards. Pc 66 Pc 100 Pc 133 Pc 400/533 comes in Pentium one. comes in Pentium two. comes in Pentium three. comes in Pentium four.

Best companies of main boards: 1. Intel. 2. Asus.

3.

Gigabyte.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Parts of motherboard:

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

USB port (Universal Serial Bus) used to connect USB devices. Mick port: used to insert Mick connector. Printer port or Parallel port: used to connect printer port. Main chip: system controlling chip or IC integrated circuit. Bank slots or Ram slots: here we fix our Ram. Floppy disk drive connector port: used to connect floppy data cable. IDE1 and IDE2 connector ports: used to connect HDD & CD Rom data cables. PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect): here we fix Sound card, VGA, Modem, and LAN card. 9. ISA slots (Industrial Standard Architecture): old model of slots used as PCI slots before, but not now. 10. Battery cell: used to keep system time & date and maintain system bios password. 11. AGP slot (Accelerated Graphic Port) it is used to connect AGP VGA card. 12. Processor slot: here we connect our processor, the old type of processors coming in P2 and P3 computers. -6-

Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad 13. Power connecter: it is used to connect our power supply connector here it has 20 pins.

2. PROCESSOR

The Processor The processor (really a short form for microprocessor and also often called the CPU or central processing unit) is the central component of the PC. It is the brain that runs the show inside the PC. The processor performs all work that you do on your computer directly or indirectly. Obviously, it is one of the most important components of the PC, if not the most important. It is also, scientifically, not only one of the most amazing parts of the PC, but one of the most amazing devices in the world of technology.

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By. Qais Ahmad Processor fan: the processor fan is used to give cooling to the processor and keep it cool to perform the duty, the processor fan is one of the most important part of computer if processor fan fail to perform its duty so our system may restart or our processor might damage.

Computer Hardware Notes

The processor fan comes with a physical shaped metal attached to the processor fan which is put on above the processor called the heat sink, heat sink takes the heat from the processor or you can say it absorbers all the heat from the processor and then it makes the processor cool the fan is used to cool the heat sink while heat sink makes the processor cool so this process is in progress until the system goes off, the processor fans are in different types some of them uses 3.7 voltage, some of them uses 5V. the connecter of processor fan has 3 pins they are connected on board of the system. We have the processor fan connector on three various places of our board.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

COMPANIES of PROCESSOR
Intel: Intel is the most popular company for making computer board, processors and other components of the computer. Intel produces two types of processors: A. Seleron B. Original.

A. Seleron: seleron processors are less in speed and they are also cheap in price rather than original, they were started from 300 MHz-2 GHz. B. Original: these processors art the best in market from beginning till the now, they are expensive than any other processor in the world. They are quite speedy and reliable; they were started from 4.7 MHz-3.5GHz. AMD (Advance Micro Device): AMD is not as good considered as the Intel is. AMD also makes two types of processors: A. Duran: B. Athlon/ Sempron:

A. Duran: these processors are like Seleron less in speed and in performance. B. Athlon/Sempron: these processors are more speedy and best in quality even then Intel original, they are more speedy expensive, but because of one fault people dont prefer it because they get too heated and may get damaged in hot weather there fore people use them in cold ereas.

RAM (Random Access Memory)

One of the most important part of our computer is RAM, the RAM is also called volatile memory it mean temporary memory, the function of RAM is to take data from Hard Disk Drive and provide it to processor in an organize form. When our system goes to power off so the RAM get empty and there for it is called temporary memory.

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Computer Hardware Notes

Types of RAM:

By. Qais Ahmad

1. Dimm RAM

2. DDR RAM

1. Dimm Ram: dual inline memory module, it has 168 pins and these kinds of rams come in Pentium two and Pentium three, these rams have two cuts in it pins layout. Like in picture below:

2. DDR: Double Data Rate, these rams are coming in Pentium 4 and. The numbers of its pins are 184; they have one cut like in the picture below.

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Computer Hardware Notes

Bus types of Ram: Pc Pc 100/133 266/333 comes in Pentium 3. comes in Pentium 4. 16MB 32MB 64MB 128MB 3. GST 256MB

By. Qais Ahmad

Capacity of Ram:

512MB

1GB

Best companies: 1. Kingston

2. HTL

4. HP

4. VGA card, Video card

VGA card which is know for the display of our system, VGA card port has D shaped connector and it has 15 holes the VGA card is used to give display and it has two types. 1. PCI slot VGA card. 2. AGP slot VGA card. 1. PCI slot VGA card: this VGA card is connected in PCI slot and it is not as good as the AGP is. 2. AGP slot VGA card: this VGA card is connected in AGP slot of our main board and it is used for higher performance programs and it has more memory rather than PCI slot VGA card.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Floppy Disk Drive (FDD)

Floppy disk drive is old type of removable media type, which still has usage in different places. Floppy can store 1.44MB data on floppy disk and the size of it is 3.5 inches. A floppy drive has 34 pins for data cable connector, and 4 pins for power cable connector. This is the floppy power connector plug.

Companies of floppy drive: 1. Sony.

2. Alps.

3.Samsung.

6. Computer casing with power supply.

Casing is the metal box especially designed for computer parts in which every part of compute r has a specific place and our systems components are safe from any kind of hazard. Types of casing:

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Computer Hardware Notes

1. Desktop casing 2. Mini Tower casing.

By. Qais Ahmad 3. Midi Tower casing.

Desktop casing

Mini Tower casing

Midi Tower casing

The power supply:

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad The internal power supply is responsible for converting your standard household power into a form that your computer can use. The power supply is responsible for powering every device in your computer; if it has a problem or is of low quality you may experience many difficulties that you may not realize are actually the fault of the electrical system. This section discusses what makes up the power supply and how it works in detail.

Stability: A high quality power supply with sufficient capacity to meet the demands of your computer will provide years of stable power for your PC. A poor quality or overloaded power supply will cause all sorts of glitches that are particularly insidious, because the problems occur in other, seemingly unrelated, parts of the system. For example, power supplies can cause system crashes, can make hard disks develop bad sectors, or cause software bugs to appear, problems which can be very difficult to trace back to the power supply. Cooling: The power supply contains the main fan that controls the flow of air through the PC case. This fan is obviously a major component in your PC's cooling system.

Power Supply Functions and Signals

The power supply's main function is simple: take the power input to it from the power system of your home or office, and turn it into a form that the PC can use. However, the PC power supply's job isn't as simple as that of a standard power converter, such as the kind you might plug into your car's lighter socket to let you run a TV off your car battery. The PC power supply must provide several different voltages, at different strengths, and must also manage some additional signals that the motherboard uses.

AC-DC Voltage Conversion - 14 -

Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad The electricity you get from your utility company is in the form of alternating current (AC), while the electricity your PC requires is direct current (DC). Therefore, the primary function of your power supply is to convert your wall AC power into a DC form that your PC can use. In fact, the supply normally provides several different voltage levels to meet the demands of different components in the machine.

Standard Output Voltages PCs use several different voltages to power their various components. The core voltages have mostly remained unchanged over the 20-year history of the PC, though a couple of the lessused voltages have essentially been dropped, and an important new one has been added. The power supply provides each of these voltages, in varying amounts depending on the model, directly from its circuitry. Most of the power provided by the power supply is in the form of positive voltages, but some is in the form of negative voltages. Negative voltage is a slightly strange concept when used in reference to a DC current. In a nutshell, it just means that the voltage potential is measured from ground to the signal, instead of the signal to ground. It's essentially like turning a battery upside-down: same voltage, the current just goes backwards. The diagram below shows this better than I can explain it.

Scale illustration of the various voltages provided by a typical, modern power supply. The color of each line corresponds to the color normally given wires carrying that voltage in the supply's motherboard connectors The black zero voltage line represents the system's ground, which is the reference point.

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Computer Hardware Notes

Parts of the Power Supply

By. Qais Ahmad

This section of our guide to the power supply takes a look at the various parts that comprise the power supply both inside and outside the box. The exact contents of any supply vary depending on both the supply's form factor and its individual design, but most of them have the same general components.

Types of power supply: 1. AT 2. ATX

1. AT. Stands for advance technology, these kinds of power supplies were old type and they were coming in Pentium tow and Pentium one systems, when we shutdown our system so they give us this message It is now safe to turn off your system then we off the button of our system. 2. ATX. It stands for advance technology extended, they are new type and better than that they dont give us the above message.

7. MOUSE

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Mouse is used to operate inside of the windows and it has 3 types.

Types of mouse: 1. Serial mouse. 2. PS2 mouse 3. USB mouse

1. Serial mouse: that mouse which was connected in serial port of our system. They
had 9 holes and D shaped connector.

2. PS2 mouse: this kind of mouse is used a lot now days it has the connector displayed in the picture below.

Ps2 mouse port

3. USB mouse: This kind of mouse is the best one because we can plug and unplug them in running system it mean no need to turn off our system while connecting or disconnecting our USB mouse. - 17 -

Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Companies of mouse: 1. Autech.

2. Genius.

3. Lunar.

8. Keyboard.
Keyboard is a combination of various keys, used for data entry in computer.

Types of keyboards connectors: 1. Serial connector. 2. Ps2 connector. 3. USB connector.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad 1. Serial connector: old type of connector which had 5 pins and a little larger than ps2 connector. 2. Ps 2 connector: it is like mouse Ps 2 connector.

3. USB connector: As mouse USB connector.

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Computer Hardware Notes

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9. CD Rom
CD Rom is one the most important data input device in our computer, which is reading CD (Compaq disk) trough its lens. A CD Rom has 4 pins for power cable connector and 40 pins for data cable connector.

Types of CD ROMs:
1. CD ROM (Read only). 2.CD Writer (Read & write). 3. DVD ROM (Read CD & DVD). 4. Combo Drive (Read & write CD, Read DVD). Speed of CD ROMs: 32x, 48x & 52x, 1x=15 bytes/sec.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

10. Sound card

System uses sound card to create sound a sound card is fixed on PCI slot. A sound card has 15 holes for joystick, sockets for speakers, Mick and for line in. Types: PCI. Companies: 1. Creative.

2. Real tech.

3. Sound Max.

Parts of sound card:

11. Speakers.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Types: 1. Normal 2. Woofer. 1. Normal speakers are inside the system and they dont give so clear sound while woofer gives clear sound and externally connected with sound card trough it own socked. Companies: 1. Zoltrix

2. Multi Media

3. SP

12. Fax modem card

Modem is such device, which converts analog form of data to digital and digital to analog form. Modem is used to connect with ISP (Internet service provider). Mode has RJ 11 port and which we connect telephone line.

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Computer Hardware Notes

Types of fax modem card: 1. Internal fax modem: 2. External fax modem:

By. Qais Ahmad

1. Internal fax modem card: That modem which is fixed into PCI slot and it has 56Kbps speed (kilo byte per second). It has two ports both of them are RJ 11 (Register Jack).

2. External Modem: these kinds of modems have the same speed but its ports are serial ports it means that we fix it on serial port A or serial port B. this modem is good for net sharing because it doesnt loose its speed when used by several computers but the Internal modem looses its speed if the number of computers increase.

Here are some pictures of External modem.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Wireless modem

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Now a days technology is going forward, several kinds of modems are available in market which have fast speed and more reliability for example the above picture is of a USB modem which better than any other modems, or DSL router which provides speed in MBs.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

Hard Disk Construction and Working
To many people, a hard disk is a "black box" of sorts--it is thought of as just a small device that "somehow" stores data. There is nothing wrong with this approach of course; as long as all you care about is that it stores data. If you use your hard disk as more than just a place to "keep stuff", then you want to know more about your hard disk. It is hard to really understand the factors that affect performance, reliability and interfacing without knowing how the drive works internally. Fortunately, most hard disks are basically the same on the inside. While the technology evolves, many of the basics are unchanged from the first PC hard disks in the early 1980s.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Photograph of a modern SCSI hard disk, with major components annotated. The logic board is underneath the unit and not visible from this angle. A hard disk uses round, flat disks called platters, coated on both sides with a special media material designed to store information in the form of magnetic patterns. The platters are mounted by cutting a hole in the center and stacking them onto a spindle. The platters rotate at high speed, driven by a special spindle motor connected to the spindle. Special electromagnetic read/write devices called heads are mounted onto sliders and used to either record information onto the disk or read information from it. The sliders are mounted onto arms, all of which are mechanically connected into a single assembly and positioned over the surface of the disk by a device called an actuator. A logic board controls the activity of the other components and communicates with the rest of the PC. Each surface of each platter on the disk can hold tens of billions of individual bits of data. These are organized into larger "chunks" for convenience, and to allow for easier and faster access to information. Each platter has two heads, one on the top of the platter and one on the bottom, so a hard disk with three platters (normally) has six surfaces and six total heads. Each platter has its information recorded in concentric circles called tracks. Each track is further broken down into smaller pieces called sectors, each of which holds 512 bytes of information. The entire hard disk must be manufactured to a high degree of precision due to the extreme miniaturization of the components, and the importance of the hard disk's role in the PC. The main part of the disk is isolated from outside air to ensure that no contaminants get onto the platters, which could cause damage to the read/write heads.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Exploded line drawing of a modern hard disk, showing the major components. Though the specifics vary greatly between different designs, the basic components you see above are typical of almost all PC hard disks. Here's an example case showing in brief what happens in the disk each time a piece of information needs to be read from it. This is a highly simplified example because it ignores factors such as disk caching, error correction, and many of the other special techniques that systems use today to increase performance and reliability. For example, sectors are not read individually on most PCs; they are grouped together into continuous chunks called clusters. A typical job, such as loading a file into a spreadsheet program, can involve thousands or even millions of individual disk accesses, and loading a 20 MB file 512 bytes at a time would be rather inefficient: 1. The first step in accessing the disk is to figure out where on the disk to look for the needed information. Between them, the application, operating system, system BIOS and possibly any special driver software for the disk, do the job of determining what part of the disk to read. 2. The location on the disk undergoes one or more translation steps until a final request can be made to the drive with an address expressed in terms of its geometry. The geometry of the drive is normally expressed in terms of the cylinder, head and sector that the system wants the drive to read. (A cylinder is equivalent to a track for addressing purposes). A request is sent to the drive over the disk drive interface giving it this address and asking for the sector to be read. 3. The hard disk's control program first checks to see if the information requested is already in the hard disk's own internal buffer (or cache). It if is then the controller supplies the information immediately, without needing to look on the surface of the disk itself. 4. In most cases the disk drive is already spinning. If it isn't (because power management has instructed the disk to "spin down" to save energy) then the drive's controller board will activate the spindle motor to "spin up" the drive to operating speed. 5. The controller board interprets the address it received for the read, and performs any necessary additional translation steps that take into account the particular characteristics of the drive. The hard disk's logic program then looks at the final number of the cylinder requested. The cylinder number tells the disk which track to look at on the surface of the disk. The board instructs the actuator to move the read/write heads to the appropriate track.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad 6. When the heads are in the correct position, the controller activates the head specified in the correct read location. The head begins reading the track looking for the sector that was asked for. It waits for the disk to rotate the correct sector number under itself, and then reads the contents of the sector. 7. The controller board coordinates the flow of information from the hard disk into a temporary storage area (buffer). It then sends the information over the hard disk interface, usually to the system memory, satisfying the system's request for data.

Every hard disk contains one or more flat disks that are used to actually hold the data in the drive. These disks are called platters (sometimes also "disks" or "discs"). They are composed of two main substances: a substrate material that forms the bulk of the platter and gives it structure and rigidity, and a magnetic media coating which actually holds the magnetic impulses that represent the data. Hard disks get their name from the rigidity of the platters used, as compared to floppy disks and other media which use flexible "platters" (actually, they aren't usually even called platters when the material is flexible.) The platters are "where the action is"--this is where the data itself is recorded. For this reason the quality of the platters and particularly, their media coating, is critical. The surfaces of each platter are precision machined and treated to remove any imperfections, and the hard disk itself is assembled in a clean room to reduce the chances of any dirt or contamination getting onto the platters.

Hard Disk Sector Structures

A sector is the basic unit of data storage on a hard disk. The term "sector" emanates from a mathematical term referring to that pie shaped angular section of a circle, bounded on two sides by radii and the third by the perimeter of the circle - See Figure 1. An explanation in its simplest form, a hard disk is comprised of a group of predefined sectors that form a circle. That circle of predefined sectors is defined as a single track. A group of concentric circles (tracks) define a single surface of a disks platter. Early hard disks had just a single one-sided platter, while today's hard disks are comprised of several platters with tracks on both sides, all of which comprise the entire hard disk capacity. Early hard disks had the same number of sectors per track location, and in fact, the number of sectors in each track were fairly standard between models. Today's advances in drive technology have allowed the number of sectors per track, or SPT, to vary significantly, but more about that later. Figure 1

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad When a hard disk is prepared with its default values, each sector will be able to store 512 bytes of data. Without elaborating, there are a few operating system disk setup utilities that permit this 512 byte number per sector to be modified, however 512 is the standard, and found on virtually all hard drives by default. Each sector, however, actually holds much more than 512 bytes of information. Additional bytes are needed for control structures, information necessary to manage the drive, locate data and perform other functions. Exact sector structure depends on the drive manufacturer and model, however the contents of a sector usually include the following elements: ID Information: Within each sector a small space is left to identify the sector's number and location, which is used to locate the sector on the disk and provide for status information about the sector itself. For example, a single bit is used to indicate if the sector has been marked defective and remapped. Synchronization Fields: These are used internally by the drive controller to guide the read process. Data: The actual data in the sector. ECC: Error correcting code used to ensure data integrity. Gaps: Often referred to as spacers used to separate sector areas and provide time for the controller to process what it has been read before processing additional data. Servo Information: In addition to the sectors, each of which contain the items above, space on each track is allocated for servo information on drives that utilize embedded servo drives. Most, if not all, modern drives not employ servo technology. Each of the elements identified above are collectively known as sector overhead. The amount of space taken up by this collective overhead is important, as the more bits that are relegated to disk or data management, the fewer that will be available for actual data storage. Hard disk manufacturers strive to reduce the amount of overhead information actually stored on the disk. When you see the term format efficiency, it refers to the percentage of bits on each disk that are used for data, as opposed to overhead. Obviously, the higher the format efficiency the better, however this information is closely held by disk manufacturers and extremely difficult to track down.

One of the most important innovations in sector format was IBM's 1990 development of the No-ID Format, whereupon the ID fields are removed from the sector format. Instead of labeling each sector within the sector header, a format map is created and stored in memory and referenced when a sector must be located. This map contains information about which sectors have been marked bad and data relocated, sector location relative to the location of servo information etcetera. This improves format efficiency by allowing up to 10% more data to be stored on the surface of each platter, while improving performance by eliminating the need to extract this information from each sector. Critical positioning information is present in system memory; therefore it can be accessed much more quickly. Best companies: 1. Seagate 2. Maxitor 3. WD (Western Digital) 4. Samsung

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

14. Monitor
Monitor is such device, which shows the entire performance that we carry out on our system in the form of presentation. A monitor cable has 15 pins that we connect in our VGA card port, 3 pins fro power cable. Types: Super VGA: Resolution 1024 x 786 pixels. Enhanced VGA: Resolution 1280 x 1024 pixels. Best companies: 1. Philips 2. View sonic 3. Samsung. 4. Compaq.

LCD monitor

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Net work card

NIC (Net interface card), Ethernet card or LAN card has RJ 45 port, all the new network card have RJ 45 port, but old had different types or ports which described below.

RJ 45 connector

A NIC, or Network Interface Card, is a circuit board or chip, which allows the computer to communicate to other computers on a Network. This board, when connected to a cable or other method of transferring data such as infrared, can share resources, information and computer hardware. Local or Wide area networks are generally used for large businesses as well as are beginning to be found in homes as home users begin to have more than one computer. Utilizing network cards to connect to a network allow users to share data such as companies being able to have the capability of having a database that can be accessed all at the same time, send and receive e-mail internally within the company, or share hardware devices such as printers. Connectors Network cards have three main types of connectors. Below is an example of what a network card may look like.

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad BNC - As illustrated in the above picture, the BNC connector is a round connector which is used for Thinnet or 10Base-2 Local Area Network.

DB9 - The DB9 connector, not to be confused with the Serial Port, or sometimes referred to as the RJ45 JACK, not to be confused with the RJ45 connection, is used with Token Ring networks. DB-15 - The DB-15 connector is used for a Thicknet or 10Base-5 Local area network. RJ45 - Today, one of the most popular types of connections used with computer networks. RJ45 looks similar to a phone connector or RJ11 connector but is slightly larger. LED -The LEDs, as shown in the above illustration, indicates if it detects a network; generally by a green light which may flash as it communicates, and then a red light which indicates collisions which will generally flash or not flash at all.

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Computer Hardware Notes

Making RJ 45 connector:

By. Qais Ahmad

Wireless Network Card:

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Computer Hardware Notes

By. Qais Ahmad

Trouble shooting of computer

No display: First of all check the power weather it is coming to system or not. If the power is not coming, check power supply or power cable. If power is coming then check monitor cable weather attached to VGA or not if monitor is OK then check your VGA card, if VGA card is damaged, then system in start up give deep beep sounds, if VGA is OK so then check RAM, if RAM is damaged so it also gives sound of beep, attach your Ram in another system to confirm. If still no display then clean all your system from dust and fix every component again including processor, check data cables weather the data cables might have gotten damaged. If still no display then let 6 things on board, Main board Processor Ram VGA card Power supply Monitor And take out the other components and start computer if it gives display so it means there is something damaged among those which we took out, or if it is still not giving display then take out those 6 things out of casing and fix them out side and then from front panel LEDs start computer if it gives display so it means your system board is short circuit with casing. If still no display, so there is only two things 1. Processor 2. Motherboard. Check them but take two things in notice Processor speed and support. If processor is ok so then check your main board for any scratch, coil, capacitor, and other devices damage.

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