This Sunday we are having a long quest and I got a low score.

August 10,2014

August 10,2014

Four types of Motherboards

Today our class is about motherboard types and differences. we already discussed about motherboard, which is the main circuit board and it interconnects the remaining parts of computer.

Totally we have 4 types of motherboards so far. They are XT, AT, Baby AT and ATX.

XT Motherboards:

XT Stands for eXtended Technology. These are all old model motherboard. In this motherboards, we find old model processor socket LIF (Low Insertion Force) sockets, ram slots Dimms and ISA (Industry Standards Architecture) slots, 12pin Power Connector and no ports.

They have slot type processors, Dimms memory modules, ISA slots for add-on card, and no ports. There are connectors and add-on cards for ports.

Eg: Pentium-I, Pentium-MMX, Pentium -II and Pentium-II Processors.

AT Motherboards:

AT stands for Advanced Technology. Advanced Technology Motherboards have PGA (Pin Grid Array) Socket, SD Ram slots, 20pin power connector PCI slots and ISA slots. we find the above components on AT motherboards.

Eg: Pentium-III Processors

Baby AT Motherboards: 

Baby AT Motherboards have the combination of XT and AT. They have both slot type processor sockets and PGA processor sockets, SD Ram slots and DDR Ram slots, PCI slots and ISA slots, 12 Pin power connector and 20Pin power connector and Ports.

Eg: Pentium-III and Pentium-IV

ATX Motherboards:

ATX stands for Advanced Technology eXtended. latest motherboards all are called as ATX motherboards. designed by ATX form factor. In this motherboards, we find MPGA Processor Sockets, DDR Ram slots, PCI slots, AGP slots, Primary and secondary IDE interfaces, SATA connectors, 20pin and 24 pin ATX power connector and Ports.

Eg: Pentium-IV, Dual Core, Core 2 Duo, Quad Core, i3, i5 and i7 Processors.

Different RAM Types and its uses

Intro

The type of RAM doesn't matter nearly as much as how much of it you've got, but using plain old SDRAM memory today will slow you down. There are main types of RAM: SDRAM, DDR and Rambus DRAM.

SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM)

Almost all systems used to ship with 3.3 volt, 168-pin SDRAM DIMMs. SDRAM is not an extension of older EDO DRAM but a new type of DRAM altogether. SDRAM started out running at 66 MHz, while older fast page mode DRAM and EDO max out at 50 MHz. SDRAM is able to scale to 133 MHz (PC133) officially, and unofficially up to 180MHz or higher. As processors get faster, new generations of memory such as DDR and RDRAM are required to get proper performance.

DDR (Double Data Rate SDRAM)

DDR basically doubles the rate of data transfer of standard SDRAM by transferring data on the up and down tick of a clock cycle. DDR memory operating at 333MHz actually operates at 166MHz * 2 (aka PC333 / PC2700) or 133MHz*2 (PC266 / PC2100). DDR is a 2.5 volt technology that uses 184 pins in its DIMMs. It is incompatible with SDRAM physically, but uses a similar parallel bus, making it easier to implement than RDRAM, which is a different technology.

Check this site for  information about DDR SDRAM memory and DDR Memory recommendations.

Rambus DRAM (RDRAM)

Despite it's higher price, Intel has given RDRAM it's blessing for the consumer market, and it will be the sole choice of memory for Intel's Pentium 4. RDRAM is a serial memory technology that arrived in three flavors, PC600, PC700, and PC800. PC800 RDRAM has double the maximum throughput of old PC100 SDRAM, but a higher latency. RDRAM designs with multiple channels, such as those in Pentium 4 motherboards, are currently at the top of the heap in memory throughput, especially when paired withPC1066 RDRAM memory.

 Processors

Intel

• Intel is the leading microprocessor manufacturer. Its microprocessors include the Pentium, Celeron and Core lines.

AMD

• AMD is Intel's main microprocessor rival. Its microprocessors include the Athlon, Turion and Phenom lines.

Macs

• In 2006, Apple announced that they were discontinuing the use of PowerPC microprocessors, which had been in use since 1994, in favor of Intel microprocessors.

August 3, 2014

 Binary

In mathematics and digital electronics, a binary number is a number expressed in the binary numeral system, or base-2 numeral system, which represents numeric values using two different symbols: typically 0 (zero) and 1 (one). More specifically, the usualbase-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2. Because of its straightforward implementation in digital electronic circuitryusing logic gates, the binary system is used internally by almost all modern computers and computer-based devices such as mobile phones. Each digit is referred to as a bit.

Decimal counting

Decimal counting uses the ten symbols 0 through 9. Counting primarily involves incremental manipulation of the "low-order" digit, or the rightmost digit, often called the "first digit". When the available symbols for the low-order digit are exhausted, the next-higher-order digit (located one position to the left) is incremented, and counting in the low-order digit starts over at 0. In decimal, counting proceeds like so:

000, 001, 002, ... 007, 008, 009, (rightmost digit starts over, and next digit is incremented)

010, 011, 012, ...

   ...

090, 091, 092, ... 097, 098, 099, (rightmost two digits start over, and next digit is incremented)

100, 101, 102, ...

After a digit reaches 9, an increment resets it to 0 but also causes an increment of the next digit to the left.

Binary counting

In binary, counting follows similar procedure, except that only the two symbols 0 and 1 are used. Thus, after a digit reaches 1 in binary, an increment resets it to 0 but also causes an increment of the next digit to the left:

0000,

0001, (rightmost digit starts over, and next digit is incremented)

0010, 0011, (rightmost two digits start over, and next digit is incremented)

0100, 0101, 0110, 0111, (rightmost three digits start over, and the next digit is incremented)

1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111 ...

Since binary is a base-2 system, each digit represents an increasing power of 2, with the rightmost digit representing 2⁰, the next representing 2¹, then 2², and so on. To determine the decimal representation of a binary number simply take the sum of the products of the binary digits and the powers of 2 which they represent. For example, the binary number 100101 is converted to decimal form as follows:

100101₂ = [ ( 1 ) × 2⁵ ] + [ ( 0 ) × 2⁴ ] + [ ( 0 ) × 2³ ] + [ ( 1 ) × 2² ] + [ ( 0 ) × 2¹ ] + [ ( 1 ) × 2⁰ ]

100101₂ = [ 1 × 32 ] + [ 0 × 16 ] + [ 0 × 8 ] + [ 1 × 4 ] + [ 0 × 2 ] + [ 1 × 1 ]

100101₂ = 37₁₀

To create higher numbers, additional digits are simply added to the left side of the binary representation.