Exercise 1 - Pre-final

Hard drive

-a hard disk drive (HDD), commonly referred to as a hard drive or hard disk,is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces.

Platter

-The platters are the actual disks inside the drive that store the magnetized data. Traditionally platters are made of a light aluminum alloy and coated with a magnetizable material such as a ferrite compound that is applied in liquid form and spun evenly across the platter or thin metal film plating that is applied to the platter through electroplating, the same way that chrome is produced. A hard disk platter (or disk) is a component of a hard disk drive: it is the circular disk on which the magnetic data are stored. The rigid nature of the platters in a hard drive is what gives them their name (as opposed to the flexible materials which are used to make floppy disks). Hard drives typically have several platters which are mounted on the same spindle.

Spindle & Spindle Motor

-The platters in a drive are separated by disk spacers and are clamped to a rotating spindle that turns all the platters in unison. The spindle motor is built right into the spindle or mounted directly below it and spins the platters at a constant set rate ranging from 3,600 to 7,200 RPM. The motor is attached to a feedback loop to ensure that it spins at precisely the speed it is supposed to.

Spindle - The spindle spins the platters thousands of rotations per minute, depending on the speed of the hard drive. Most consumer-based hard drives have spindle speeds of either 5,400RPM or 7,200RPM while faster server drives support speeds of 10,000RPM and 15,000RPM. This spindle speed is considered the mechanical speed of the drive; generally, the higher the speed, the faster the data can be accessed and read.

Spindle Motor - The spindle motor, also sometimes called the spindle shaft, is responsible for turning the hard disk platters, allowing the hard drive to operate. The spindle motor is sort of a "work horse" of the hard disk.

Read/ Write Heads

-The read/write heads read and write data to the platters. There is typically one head per platter side, and each head is attached to a single actuator shaft so that all the heads move in unison. When one head is over a track, all the other heads are at the same location over their respective surfaces. Typically, only one of the heads is active at a time, i.e., reading or writing data. When not in use, the heads rest on the stationary platters, but when in motion the spinning of the platters create air pressure that lifts the heads off the platters. The space between the platter and the head is so minute that even one dust particle or a fingerprint could disable the spin. This necessitates that hard drive assembly be done in a clean room. When the platters cease spinning the heads come to rest, or park, at a predetermined position on the heads, called the landing zone.

Head Actuator

-All the heads are attached to a single head actuator, or actuator arm, that moves the heads around the platters. Older hard drives used a stepper motor actuator, which moved the heads based on a motor reacting to stepper pulses. Each pulse moved the actuator over the platters in predefined steps. Stepper motor actuators are not used in modern drives because they are prone to alignment problems and are highly sensitive to heat. Modern hard drives use a voice coil actuator, which controls the movement of a coil toward or away from a permanent magnet based on the amount of current flowing through it. This guidance system is called a servo.

Ribbon Cable

-(also known as multi-wire planar cable) is a cable with many conducting wires running parallel to each other on the same flat plane. As a result the cable is wide and flat rather than round. Its name comes from the resemblance of the cable to a piece of ribbon (which is likewise wide and flat).

Tape Seal

-On some drives, a metallic tape seal is applied around the perimeter of the drive to fully enclose the drive.

Base Casting

-the bottom of the disk is often called the base casting, the name coming from the manufacturing process used to create the single piece of aluminum from which it is normally made. The drive mechanics are placed into the base casting, and another piece of usually aluminum is placed on top to enclose the heads and platters.

Motherboard

-a motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. It is also known as a mainboard, baseboard, system board, or, on Apple computers, a logic board, and is sometimes abbreviated as mobo.

IDE Connector

-These are the PCI IDE connectors on the motherboard. Each connector is identified by markings on the motherboard. The secondary IDE connector is labeled SEC IDE (top connector in this graphic) and the primary IDE connector is labeled PRI IDE (bottom connector in this graphic).

Northbridge

-The north bridge, also known as the memory controller hub (MCH) in Intel systems (AMD, VIA, SiS and others usually use 'northbridge'), is traditionally one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on a PC motherboard, the other being the southbridge. Separating the chipset into northbridge and southbridge is common, although there are rare instances where these two chips have been combined onto one die when design complexity and fabrication processes permit it.

Southbridge

-The Southbridge, also known as the I/O Controller Hub (ICH), is a chip that implements the "slower" capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture. The southbridge can usually be distinguished from the northbridge by not being directly connected to the CPU. Rather, the northbridge ties the southbridge to the CPU.

Processor Socket

-The term CPU socket (or CPU slot) is widely used to describe the connector linking the motherboard to the CPU(s) in certain types of desktop and server computers, particularly those compatible with the Intel x86 architecture.

PCI

-The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (in practice almost always shortened to PCI), specifies a computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard. These devices can take any one of the following forms:

• An integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard itself, called a planar device in the PCI specification.
• An expansion card that fits into a socket.

SATA

-Serial ATA (SATA, IPA: /ˈseɪ.tə/ or /ˈsæ.tə/) is a computer bus primarily designed for transfer of data between a computer and storage devices (like hard disks or optical drives).
The main benefits are thinner cables that let air cooling work more efficiently, faster transfers, ability to remove devices while operating (Hot swapping), and more reliable operation with tighter data integrity checks.

DRAM

-Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is a type of random access memory that stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated circuit. Since real capacitors leak charge, the information eventually fades unless the capacitor charge is refreshed periodically.

Monitor

-a computer display monitor, usually called simply a monitor, is a piece of electrical equipment which displays viewable images generated by a computer without producing a permanent record. The word "monitor" is used in other contexts; in particular in television broadcasting, where a television picture is displayed to a high standard. A computer display device is usually either a cathode ray tube or some form of flat panel such as a TFT LCD display. The monitor comprises the display device, circuitry to generate a picture from electronic signals sent by the computer, and an enclosure or case. Within the computer, either as an integral part or a plugged-in interface, there is circuitry to convert internal data to a format compatible with a monitor.

System Unit

-a system unit, also known as a base unit, is the main body of a desktop computer, typically consisting of a metal or (rarely) plastic enclosure containing the motherboard, power supply, cooling fans, internal disk drives, and the memory modules and expansion cards that are plugged into the motherboard, such as video and network cards.

Motherboard

-A Motherboard or system board is the main printed, flat circuit board in an electronic device such as microcomputers. The board contains expansion slots (sockets) that accept additional boards (expansion Cards). In a microcomputer, the motherboard contains the microprocessor, the primary storage chips (or main memory cards), the buses, and all the chips used for controlling the peripherals.

Microprocessor

-A microprocessor is a processor whose elements are miniaturized into one or a few integrated circuits contained in a single silicon microchip. It executes instructions. In a microcomputer, the central processing unit (CPU) is held on a single microprocessor. In order to function as a processor, it requires a system clock, primary storage, and power supply.

Memory Chips

-A memory chip is a chip that holds programs and data either temporarily or permanently. The major categories of memory chips are RAMs and ROMs.

System Clock

-The clock is a device that generates periodic, accurately spaced signals used for several purposes such as regulation of the operations of a processor or generation of interrupts. The clock circuit uses the fixed vibrations generated from a quartz crystal to deliver a steady stream of pulses to the processor. The system clock controls the speed of all the operations within a computer.

Buses

-A bus is a data pathway between several hardware components inside or outside a computer. It not only connects the parts of the CPU to each other, but also links the CPU with other important hardware. The other important hardware includes memory, a disk control unit, a terminal control unit, a printer control unit, and a communications control unit. The capacity of a bus is expressed as bits. A larger capacity bus is faster in data transfer. For example, a 32-bit bus is faster than an 8-bit bus.

Ports

-A port is an external connecting socket on the outside the computer. This is a pathway into and out of the computer. A port lets users plug in outside peripherals, such as monitors, scanners and printers.

Keyboard

-a computer keyboard is a peripheral partially modelled after the typewriter keyboard. Keyboards are designed for the input of text and characters and also to control the operation of a computer.

Printer

-a computer printer, or more commonly a printer, produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a document source.