Understanding Personal Computer Hardware

This is a book for the PC user who would like to understand how their PCs work. It is written for the reader who is not a computer or electrical engineer but who wants enough information so that they can make intelligent buying or upgrading decisions, maximize their productivity, and become less dependant on others for help with their computer questions and problems. The book provides a thorough yet concise description of the entire IBM-type PC, including its subsystems, components, and peripherals. The book concentrates on PCs based on the Pentium and Petium Pro class processors. The book contains easy-to-do experiments that readers can perform to actually see how things work. Understanding PC Computer Hardware can be read cover to cover or used as reference source.

Overview. - Bits, Bytes and Words. - The PC Hierarchy. - Motherboards and Buses. - Input/Output. - PC Supporting Systems. - The Microprocessor. - Memory. - Keyboards. - Mice. - Display Monitors. - Display Adaptors. - Device Interfaces: Floppy, IDE and SCSI. - Hard Drives I: Physical Characteristics. - Hard Drives II: Logical Characteristics. - Floppy Drives. - The Parallel Interface. - Printers. - Asynchronous and Synchronous Transmission. - The Serial Interface. - Models. - Optical Storage.