General Concepts 6 min read
What Is a Breadboard and How Does It Work?
The breadboard is the bread-and-butter of DIY electronics. Breadboards allow beginners to get acquainted with circuits without the need for…
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General Concepts 9 min read
PCB
Sometimes abbreviated as a board, a PCB is short for printed circuit board and was invented by Paul Eisler while working on a radio in 1936. A PCB…
General Concepts 3 min read
DRAM Technologies
As microprocessors and chipsets evolve, so do memory technologies. Since DRAM is still the primary type of memory used in…
General Concepts 3 min read
Parity Memory
DRAM memory can include a mechanism used to verify and maintain the integrity of the data it holds. The two…
General Concepts 4 min read
Matching Memory to the Motherboard
The memory added to a system, whatever its packaging, must be matched to the width of the data bus of…
General Concepts 4 min read
Bits, Bytes, and Words
Nearly everything the PC connects to is measured in bits these days, especially modems and Internet connections, but RAM is…
General Concepts 4 min read
RAM
RAM, or random access memory, is used in the PC for its primary memory. RAM is where all active programs…
General Concepts 3 min read
A Brief Overview Of Rom
In order to change data stored on the computer, you must be able to write to it. If you cannot…
General Concepts 3 min read
The POST Process
Immediately after the BIOS programs are loaded to memory, the POST (Power-On Self-Test) starts. The POST performs a check of…
General Concepts 6 min read
Booting The Computer
The process used to start up a PC each time it is powered on is called the boot process. While…
General Concepts 3 min read
The BIOS and the Boot Process
When you flick, push, or pull on the power to your PC, there are absolutely no instructions in memory for…
General Concepts 5 min read
Chipset Functions
A chipset integrates a number of VLSI (very large scale integration) chips that provide much of the PC’s functionality. Each…
