A list of basic computer skills

This is a list of basic computer skills. A more comprehensive orientation highlighting Microsoft Windows only is in PCs for Dummies.

hardware pieces: motherboard, hard drive, video card, power supply & limits placed on video and hard drives by watts,

CPU, memory, fans, DVD drive, Molex connector male and female, PATA (IDE) and SATA

volts, amps, how to measure +5 and +12 Volt supplies with a meter

consequence of leaving a meter set for amps

static discharge (ESD)

remember more by making a journal about what you learn

motherboard user manual on DVD

user manuals obtained through web sites

user name vs. password

single click, double click, right click

drawing tablet as a mouse, especially to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome

slots on the motherboard

PCI, PCI-e, DDR3 memory

how to mount a second HDD

PC vs. Apple vs. tablet

Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows, Linux, Unix, Apple OS-X, cell-phone OS

how similar

how different

Linux is free!

open systems

Windows is plagued by viruses, hackers, & identity theft

Augusta Linux User Group

booting

dual booting

GRUB

Windows full-retail version, OEM version, and upgrade

field trip to Staples to see Windows versions, also video cards, power supplies, networking

keyboard and mouse by PS/2 vs. USB

Multiple keyboard & mouse are possible with USB

monitor by CRT display, LCD display, or TV

HDMI, VGA, DVI connectors

an economical hardware source: Cyberguys catalog

USB memory

see file systems on System Monitor (Linux)

single hard drive vs. JBOD vs. RAID

what is a hard drive crash?

what is inside a hard drive?

what is latency?

units of time: second, ms, us (microsecond)

SSD

fast

but the memory chips wear out when you write to them too much

programs are run in the CPU

BIOS as a program but it doesn't come from the hard drive

identify the BIOS chip

keyboard keys to get into BIOS, at boot time

Operating System as a program

utility programs, especially Linux

productivity suites

antivirus program

powers of ten when we talk about hard drive size

byte: bits in a byte, characters in a byte, bytes in a document

kByte, MByte, GByte, TByte

RAID=redundant array of inexpensive drives

RAID advantages

speed by "striping"

fault tolerance by "mirroring"

RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 5, 6

RAID is not backup

how to get RAID

motherboard

controller card (PCI or PCI-enhanced)

software RAID (motherboard, ZFS, mdadm, Windows 8 Storage Spaces)

software RAID can set up many RAID partitions on two or more HDD, even a mix of striping and mirroring

Linux "terminal"

how Linux and Unix get flexible but complicated--a career computer expert needs to use Terminal

Terminal on Windows through Run and cmd

network

used to get Internet to a computer

used for file sharing

used for printer sharing

cable modem

this list is on web site https://sites.google.com/site/solderandcircuits/home/the-networking-stack/a-list-of-basic-computer-skills-1

updated Aug 17, 2013

For an orientation to motherboards, http://home.earthlink.net/~johnenge/pchrdwr/1363term.htm . But it dates from 2006.