An operating system is a program that starts up whenever you start up your computer. It has 4 basic functions which are
it allows other programs to communicate with the hardware of your pc
it creates a user interface that makes sense to the people using the pc
it enables the users to use the installed programs &
it enables the users to add & delete installed programs & data.
A piece of software worth mentioning is powerquests partition commander. It lets you create resize split merge delete undelete & convert partitions whilst keeping your data intact. It also gives you the ability to browse copy or movefiles & folders between supported partitions expand an ntfs partition even if its a system partition withuot rebooting change ntfs cluster sizes & add new partitions for several operating systems. Another program worth mentioning is vcoms partition commander which is very similiar.
When microsoft introduced the disk management console starting with win 2000 they introduced a new form of disk partition called a dynamic disk. With a dynamic disk you can do things like turn two hard drives into a single partition. You can increase partitions without first deleting partitions or losing data which was previously impossible without specialist tools.
Regular drives are called basic disks. Dynamic disks use volumes instead of partitions. Be warned if you change from a dynamic disk to a basic disk you lose all your data.
Older drives run at the long standard speed of 3600 RPM. Some newer drives run at 10000 RPM+. Faster drives provide better performance but they are also more prone to overheating. This is especially true in tight cases & where there are many drives. You can buy drive bay fans which can vary quite a bit in price.
The cabling on a PATA device obstructs airflow & is limited to 18 inches without corrupting data. With SATA data is sent serially along just 7 wires rather than 80 & the cabling can be upto a metre long. Also SATA devices are hot swappable which makes them ideal for RAID systems. SATA is backward compatible with PATA standards & can be linked to PATA devices via a SATA bridge.
Something that has taken over from floppy drives is usb flash memory drives. Some are smaller than a regular pack of chewing gum. They are plug n play in windows vista/ xp/ 2000. It appears in my computer as a removal drive. They are solid state. They’re also cross platform compatible.
ATX motherboards & power supplies have a soft power feature that handles the power management issues well. As long as an atx system has power from a wall socket it is on so ie it can power up when a phone call comes in so you can answer it. All the most important settings for atx are in your cmos setup.
A multimeter soetimes called a voltohm meter enables you to measure different aspects of electrical current. A multimeter consists of a dial to set the test you want, an analog or digital display & two probes. It typically measures current, continuity, resistance, ac voltage & dc voltage. If you see a v with a solid line above a dashed line that indicates direct current voltage.
A few years ago intel introduced the wtx motherboard for servers. This was twice the size of atx mothyerboards & offered multi processor support at a time when multi processors were just found on servers.
At the same time VIA technologies were introducing ITX & mini ITX. The latter is half the size of a flex atx motherboard.
A company called shuttle invented the entertainment box. The form factor for this is xpc & supports intel & AMD processors. This is about twice the size of a toaster.
PCI-EXPRESS
PCI-Express also known as Third Generation I/O, 3GIO & Arapahoe is revolutionary.
It uses a serial interface rather than a parallel bus architecture. It is software compatible but not hardware compatible with pci.
Its speed is absolutely fantastic each pair of wires called a lane & there can be upto 32 of them has an effective rate of 2Gbps giving a total maximum bandwidth of 128Gbps.
Epsilon Weblog 