Ch. 3 - Computer Hardware

Last Tuesday, we started learning about computer hardware. As I learned from Ch. 1, computer hardware is one of the six elements of an information system (the other five elements are: people, software, communications/networking, data resources, and policies & procedures).

A computer is a system with input in the form of keyboards, mice, and scanners, processing in the form of a CPU (Central Processing Unit), output in the form of video display units and printers, storage in the form of primary (RAM and ROM) and secondary storage units, and control. CPU's consist of a control unit and an arithmetic logic unit (ALU). The control unit controls and coordinates the computer's components and moves data in and out of storage. It also instructs the ALU which command to execute and sends output to the printer or screen. On the other hand, the ALU performs arithmetic and logical operations on data - it adds, subtracts, multiplies, and compares. It was interesting to learn about the functions of CPU's, because I've always heard about them in technological conversations, but I never really understood what they did.

We also learned about microcomputer systems, such as personal computers, laptops, workstations and network services, and terminals such as dumb and intelligent terminals.

Overall, this chapter does seem more difficult to understand just because it is so technical and explains complex systems in more detail. But I think it will be useful for me to learn because I've always been kind of ignorant about the technicalities of how computers and other hardware systems work, and now I will at least have a basic understanding of what people are talking about when they mention CPU's, ALU's, ROM, RAM and terminals.