ben m
Joined: 15 Sep 2002
Posts: 337
Location: UK |
| Week 2 - Computers 1 |
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Computers 1
Hi everyone.
This week I hope that by completing this task you will gain a better understanding of computer fundamentals. Not only is this knowledge invaluable for a Sound Engineer working in a digital environment, it is also extremely useful across many other disciplines.
This week, I would like you to answer the questions below that have been assigned to you.
Again, you will get more out of this exercise if you investigate the other questions also.
Please define the following terms and explain their abbreviations where relevant.
USB/USB 2.0 -
Aidan
SCSI -
Daniel
Firewire -
Mike
ATA/IDE -
Nancy
What devices may be connected to these interfaces, and which have implications for the Audio Engineer? -
Aidan
Identify the purpose of a motherboard. -
Daniel
Explain the purposes of the following components/peripherals within a Computer, and how they would connect to a typical motherboard:
CPU -
Aidan
RAM -
Daniel
Hard Drive -
Mike
Video Card -
Nancy
Sound Card -
Aidan
CD/DVD-ROM Drive -
Daniel
Modem -
Mike
UPS -
Nancy
Explain the term 'Operating System', and identify the 2 main OSs' in use (name the relevant platform for these OSs') -
Mike
Expand the abbreviation 'GUI' and give a description of its concept and how it has evolved. -
Nancy
So, lets get started!
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ben@audiocourses.com |
Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:14 am |
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Dani
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 35
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SCSI Stands for Small Computer System Interface, it is an IO interface developed for fast read and write of hard disks.
With the advent of ATA133 drives, the speed difference has become marginal on the data flow rate, but most SCSI drives have a higher spin speed so data access time is often faster. The big advantage of SCSI is in the setting up of RAID (Redundant Array of Independant (or Inexpensive) Disks). This gives higher fault tolerence and performance by using two identical Hard Drives at the same time.
The motherboard is the hardware that connects everything together, it is a printed circuit board with Ports or Slots into which other hardware is fitted. RAM, Processor, North Bridge, South Bridge, AGP. PCI, IDE and ISA all reside on the motherboard. Today, most motherboards also carry on-board sound and even LAN. As technology progresses, the MB gets more powerfull, with the inclusion of Blue Tooth, USB2 and Firewire.
RAM is Random Access Memory. This is the "thinking space" for a computer, it's where all the data that is being queued up for the Processor is handled and sorted. This type of memory is known as “volatile memory” this means as the electrical charge leaves the RAM (when a device is turned off) the data is lost. There are different types of RAM available depending on the hardware used. Some of these include SIM, DIM, DDR and RAMBUS (developed for the Pentium 4, fast but pricey). It is generally thought that the more RAM you have, then the faster the system, but with some Microsoft™ products, this is not the case. Windows 98 will not function correctly with more than 256MB; Windows Millennium will not function correctly with more than 512 MB. With the advent of Windows NT/2000, Windows XP and XP Pro we can finally use more than a gigabyte or RAM productively. The different types of memory also have different slots in which to be installed. It is important therefore, that you know what type a motherboard takes before you upgrade.
CD ROM (Compact Disk Read Only Memory) is a medium developed for storing information digitally, A CD-ROM is physically identical to a Digital Audio Compact Disc used in a CD player, but the bits recorded on it are interpreted as computer data instead of music. You need to buy a "CD-ROM Drive" and attach it to your computer in
order to use CD-ROMs.
A CD-ROM has several advantages over other forms of data storage, and few disadvantages. A CD-ROM can hold up to 800 megabytes of data, the equivalent of thousands of floppy discs. Magnetic fields or the x-rays in airport scanners do not damage CD-ROMs. The data on a CD-ROM can be accessed much faster than a tape, but CD-ROMs are slower than hard discs. The main advantage of CD ROMS as a media these days is that CR Writers are now very affordable, most new computer systems include a CD Writer as standard; this is excellent for backing up your data, and obviously as a musician, for writing CD Audio. The CD Drive is connected to one the computer’s IDE ports or in some cases a SCSI port.
DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) is similar to CD ROMs except that they can carry a lot more data, (into gigabytes). This medium is primarily used for High Quality Video playback of movies and documentaries. With the extra advantages of DVD, such as faster data rate and multiple streams, we can now have true surround sound in the home/studio. As we saw with CD Writers, the price of DVD Writers has fallen to an affordable level and although not yet “standard” in PC’s it will not be too long before they are fitted to most computers “out of the shop”. DVD’s are excellent for saving digital recording sessions, thus freeing up valuable hard drive space in the studio. DVD Drives are also connected to the computers IDE Port and it used to be that a dedicated decoder/graphics card was also needed to play back DVD movies. As computers have got faster, there are alternative Software players available.
Thanks
Dani |
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Tue Mar 11, 2003 10:06 am |
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MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 163
Location: Northfork Recording Studios |
| Firewire reply |
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firewire is a high speed data transfer medium:
Firewire originally was developed by Apple Computer, Inc. as a high speed serial bus, a kind of ADB on steroids. Lots of steroids. While it was developed, many thought it was actually too fast, and some lower speed interconnect like USB would be cheaper to implement. Firewire languished. Suddenly, in 1995, a tiny connector showed up on the first DV camcorders shipped by Sony. DV was the killer app for Firewire. In late 1995, Firewire was accepted as a standard by the IEEE, henceforth called IEEE 1394.
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The AHA 8940, also known as the DPS Spark
The Firewire terminates in a "Gameboy" like connector, manufactured by Molex.
The Firewire has two individually shielded pairs for data, and two extra wires for power.
What is Firewire?
A lot has been written already about Firewire, therefore, this page will primarily function as a pointer to the resources on-line. One of the first and still the best paper was written by Roger Jennings, a resident of Oakland, CA, who has given up running large companies and now writes large books instead. His voluminous volumes on NT, Database Development etc. are best sellers. His famous paper "Fire on the Wire" can be found here.
Many people think Firewire is DV. Roger was one of the first who realized that Firewire is much bigger than DV. It's huge. Roger writes: "The Digital VCR Consortium, consisting of more than 50 manufacturers of consumer electronics firms has adopted the IEEE-1394 High Performance Serial Bus as the standard digital interface between consumer DV products. Sony's release of three moderately-priced DV camcorders with 1394 digital audio/video input/output and device control is a major step in the widespread adoption of the High Performance Serial Bus for digital audio/video interconnection. Matsushita recently joined the 1394 coalition with the Panasonic NV-DE3 DV camcorder. Other Japanese camcorder and VCR manufacturers are certain to follow the Sony and Matsushita lead. The Digital Audio/Video Interoperability Council (DAVIC) and Europe's Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) consortium have adopted the 1394 bus for set-top box and other broadcast-related applications. DBS set-top box manufacturers for the U.S. market appear poised to adopt 1394 in third-generation satellite TV receivers."
What about the wire in the Firewire?
As shown in the diagram at the left, the standard Firewire cable actually consists of six wires. Data is sent via two separately-shielded twisted pair transmission lines. The two twisted pairs are crossed in each cable assembly to create a transmit-receive connection. Two more wires carry power (8 to 40 v, 1.5 a max.) to remote devices. Currently, these power lines are rarely used. The wires terminate in gameboy-style plugs, also shown at the left.
Sony uses a 4 conductor cable for the connection to the DV camcorders and DVCRs. They are like the above mentioned setup, but without the power wires. They terminate in smaller, 4prong connectors. To connect a Sony DV camcorder or DVCR with a standard IEE1394 Firewire device or interface card, you need an adapter cable, 4prong on one side, 6 on the other. It simply connects the data lines while omitting the power connection.
According to the standard, the IEEE 1394 "wire" is good for 400 Megabits per second over 4.5 meters. The standard cable uses 28 AWG signal pairs with 40 twist/meter. The power pair in the standard cable is 22 AWG.
Longer cable runs can be achieved by using thicker cable or by lowering the bit rate. DV users, keep in mind that the signaling rate of the Sony DV camcorders is only 100 Megabit per second. Can it use longer cables? The answer is: Yes. Although way outside of the spec, several people have reported successful 100 Mbit/sec transmissions over more than 20 meters using standard cable. There are also reports of thicker cables being used to span lengths of 30 meters or more at 100 Megabit per second.
If you are the adventurous type, you can try using unshielded twisted pair (UTP). Don't notify the FCC before doing this, and if your neighbors complain about strange stuff on their TV sets, stop the experiment. We even have received reports about someone who was running 100 Mb/s 1394 over 50 meters of Cat-5 UTP! According to lore, he ran isochronous video for several days without a single frame dropped due to errors.
Assorted Firewire links:
Adaptec embraced 1394 from the get-go. They are one of the first companies with a 1394 Firewire board shipping in volume. It's sold as the DPS Spark. They make their own chips and also have one of the best sites on the topic.
Texas Instruments also is one of the Firewire pioneers. Their 1394 chipset was at the core of the world's first 1394 board, a development system sold by Skipstone. In an ironic move, Skipstone was bought by Adaptec in Spring of 1995.
Skipstone President Gary A. Hoffman (now VP at Adaptec) is head of the 1394 Trade Association. They also have one of the more interesting sites on the topic.
Molex - the folks who build the connectors. Chips by Symbios and Philips
Firewire background from the UK. Firewire at the Mining Company.
Apple's Firewire pages. Microsoft on Firewire
Taken from different sites on the net.
Mike
Last edited by MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS on Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Wed Mar 12, 2003 1:37 pm |
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MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 163
Location: Northfork Recording Studios |
| reply to hard drives |
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Nearly every desktop computer and server in use today contains one or more hard-disk drives. Every mainframe and supercomputer is normally connected to hundreds of them. You can even find VCR-type devices and camcorders that use hard disks instead of tape. These billions of hard disks do one thing well -- they store changing digital information in a relatively permanent form. They give computers the ability to remember things when the power goes out.
Hard Disk Basics
Hard disks were invented in the 1950s. They started as large disks up to 20 inches in diameter holding just a few megabytes. They were originally called "fixed disks" or "Winchesters" (a code name used for a popular IBM product). They later became known as "hard disks" to distinguish them from "floppy disks." Hard disks have a hard platter that holds the magnetic medium, as opposed to the flexible plastic film found in tapes and floppies.
At the simplest level, a hard disk is not that different from a cassette tape. Both hard disks and cassette tapes use the same magnetic recording techniques described in How Tape Recorders Work. Hard disks and cassette tapes also share the major benefits of magnetic storage -- the magnetic medium can be easily erased and rewritten, and it will "remember" the magnetic flux patterns stored onto the medium for many years.
Let's look at the big differences between cassette tapes and hard disks:
The magnetic recording material on a cassette tape is coated onto a thin plastic strip. In a hard disk, the magnetic recording material is layered onto a high-precision aluminum or glass disk. The hard-disk platter is then polished to mirror-type smoothness.
With a tape, you have to fast-forward or reverse to get to any particular point on the tape. This can take several minutes with a long tape. On a hard disk, you can move to any point on the surface of the disk almost instantly.
In a cassette-tape deck, the read/write head touches the tape directly. In a hard disk, the read/write head "flies" over the disk, never actually touching it.
The tape in a cassette-tape deck moves over the head at about 2 inches (about 5.08 cm) per second. A hard-disk platter can spin underneath its head at speeds up to 3,000 inches per second (about 170 mph or 272 kph)!
The information on a hard disk is stored in extremely small magnetic domains compared to a cassette tape's. The size of these domains is made possible by the precision of the platter and the speed of the medium.
Because of these differences, a modern hard disk is able to store an amazing amount of information in a small space. A hard disk can also access any of its information in a fraction of a second.
A typical desktop machine will have a hard disk with a capacity of between 10 and 40 gigabytes. Data is stored onto the disk in the form of files. A file is simply a named collection of bytes. The bytes might be the ASCII codes for the characters of a text file, or they could be the instructions of a software application for the computer to execute, or they could be the records of a data base, or they could be the pixel colors for a GIF image. No matter what it contains, however, a file is simply a string of bytes. When a program running on the computer requests a file, the hard disk retrieves its bytes and sends them to the CPU one at a time.
There are two ways to measure the performance of a hard disk:
Data rate - The data rate is the number of bytes per second that the drive can deliver to the CPU. Rates between 5 and 40 megabytes per second are common.
Seek time - The seek time is the amount of time between when the CPU requests a file and when the first byte of the file is sent to the CPU. Times between 10 and 20 milliseconds are common.
Harddrive spec. are way up there right now and climbing whether it be storage or speed they are a big piece of the recording pie.
there are many benifits to these drives eg.no hiss.crackling ,come back in a year you can still play in tune with your instruments and many more
When they crash they can be a nightmare.Right now! I backup as much as I can.If you buy new get a good recognised brand you wont be sorry!!
Mike |
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Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:02 pm |
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resol69
Joined: 31 Dec 2002
Posts: 69
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| Nancy's thoughts |
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Please define the following terms and explain their abbreviations where relevant.
ATA/IDE - Nancy
ATA/IDE stands for Advanced Technology Attachment/Integrated drive electronics. These are controllers are inserted into slots and connected to the hard drive with ribbon cables. The circuit board containing the controller is integrated into the hard drive. ATA refers to the controller interface and IDE refers to the drive. Since almost all IDE drives are ATA based, the two terms are used interchangeably. ATA/IDEs help run peripherals like CD-ROM drives. For example, transferring data to the CD-ROM drive.
Explain the purposes of the following components/peripherals within a Computer, and how they would connect to a typical motherboard:
Video Card - Nancy
UPS - Nancy
The
video card
connects to the computer through a PCI slot on the motherboard, or on newer computers, an AGP slot. The video card has memory on it to render 2D or 3D graphics in real time and then outputs this rendered video to your monitor via the VGA port. The more memory you have and faster the memory is on your video card, the faster you can draw complicated graphics, which is better for high tech games, and programs like Pro Tools.
UPS
is an Uninteruptable Power Supply. It's a battery backup for your computer that kicks in automatically if the power goes out or if the voltage spikes up or down, maintaining a perfectly constant 110 volt sin wave. It’s basically a power strip with a honkin’ big battery. The UPS plugs into the wall. The computer power cable plugs into the UPS. A serial cable connects the UPS to the mother board. When the power goes out, a signal is sent to the motherboard to shut down. All critical computers should be on a UPS to prevent data loss or the hardware getting fried in a power spike.
Expand the abbreviation 'GUI' and give a description of its concept and how it has evolved. – Nancy
What is GUI?
GUI (Graphical User Interface) is an object-oriented interface that allows the user to use a mouse and click to run a program, rather than the traditional UNIX or DOS command prompt. It also makes a programmer's job much easier, as you can program buttons and other objects to run code only when they are clicked on, instead of continuously running code to account for every possible function a program may have. All the nifty icons and taskbars on our computers are GUIs.
The commands we point and click on in MS Word are GUIs. You click in the “B” and the computer knows to make the highlighted text bold. You don’t have to write a program to do it. Remember WordPerfect before the Mouse? GUIs make like a lot easier. You had know what function key made the word bold and you had to turn it on and off? YUCK!
History of GUI:
Popular opinion is that the idea of GUI was stolen by Apple from Xerox when Steve Jobs was taking a tour in 1984. True, Xerox had been working on the pull-down menus that Apple commercialized, but the origins of GUI go back to 1945.
Vannevar Bush, a scientist and futurist, went public with his ideas of the “memex,” a computing device that would use what we’d call hyperlink technology to bring information to every user’s fingertips.
Bush’s ideas sparked some visionary thinking in a scientist named Douglas Engelbart. As early as 1962, he invented the first “mouse,” which he called an “X-Y Position Indicator,” a little gizmo housed in a wooden box on wheels that moved around the desktop and took the cursor with it on the display. Engelbart saw the mouse as being an integral part of a “graphical windowed interface,” and invented what he called "a windowed GUI." In 1968 Engelbart created NLS (oNLine System), a hypermedia groupware system that used the mouse, the windowed GUI, hypermedia with object addressing and linking, and even an early version of video teleconferencing to wow its audience, a group of technicians, engineers, and scientific types at Stanford University.
However, Engelbart was not the only visionary in the history of GUI. In 1963 a grad student at MIT, Ivan Sutherland, submitted as his thesis a program called “Sketchpad,” which directly manipulated objects on a CRT screen using a light pen.
Now we get to the Zerox folks: The underground buzz stayed underground, but Engelbart’s and Sutherland’s creations were not lost on the creative fellows at Xerox’s PARC facility. PARC was (and is), at least in some respects, a computing “think tank,” where brilliant and brilliantly erratic minds cranked out ideas and tried, with varying success, to implement them on the workbench.
In the early 70s, as part of a project called “Dynabook” that envisioned notebook-sized, hyperlinked computers, Alan Kay and others developed an interactive object-oriented programming language called Smalltalk. Kay had previously worked with a team at the University of Utah that developed a programming system called Flex. This was a design for a flexible simulation and graphics-oriented personal computer, with many ideas derived from the Norwegian-developed Simula programming language, another programming language called LISP, and Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Kay also borrowed ideas from a highly graphical language called Logo, which was designed to teach programming to children. Smalltalk featured a graphical user interface (GUI) that looked suspiciously similar to later iterations from both Apple and Microsoft.
The first real-life, usable GUI appeared in Xerox’s Alto computer, which debuted in 1974. The Alto, which didn’t have a GUI as you and I are used to using, but instead featured graphically driven applications. In 1981, the design and concepts which gave birth to the Alto led to the development and production of the much more streamlined, and more usable Xerox Star – the first true GUI-driven PC. The Star featured the first “computer desktop,” as well as overlapping, resizable windows, and the sophisticated PARC mouse, a gee-whiz gizmo that ran with no moving parts and used laser beams and a metal grid to track the cursor’s movement.
Along came Steve Jobs in 1984, who incorported GUI technology into the MacIntosh and rest was history.
Now we can’t live without GUIs.[/url] |
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Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:51 pm |
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MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 163
Location: Northfork Recording Studios |
| reply to modems |
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What is a modem?
A modem is a device that converts digital signals from a computer's serial port to the analog signals required for transmission over traditional telephone lines, and vice versa. Modem stands for modulator/demodulator. Conversion is necessary because telephone lines were initially designed to handle the analog nature of the human voice, not data.
The speed at which a modem transmits data is measured in units called bits per second or bps. The first modems ran at even less than 300 bps. Now 1200, 2400, and 9600 bps modems are considered slow. The faster models reach speeds of 14,400 and 28,800 bps. The faster the modem, the faster the data (for example, images from the Web) appear. Even a 28,800 bps modem, however, cannot compare to the several million bps speed that a campus Ethernet connection gives you.
Modems come in diff shapes/speeds/manufacturers.
Some are in card form which take up a slot on the motherboard
Some are usb port equipped
As mentioned some are mounted externally via the serial port
Now we have Satellite to deal with.
Mike
Last edited by MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS on Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:00 am |
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MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 163
Location: Northfork Recording Studios |
| Reply to Operating systems |
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Explain the term 'Operating System', and identify the 2 main OSs' in use (name the relevant platform for these OSs') - Mike
The Windows and Mac OSs' families are very popular are some answers to this question.From where I come from I've been obsessed with computers since 1979 .Here I've never seen a Mac OS in use ever!I'm sure it must be popular in the USA ,Southern Canada or Europe.I've seen comercials on tV and read about them but never seen one.All i've seen here are the IBM style computers that operate windows 98/nt/xp.
The operating system defines our computing experience. It's the first software we see when we turn on the computer, and the last software we see when the computer is turned off. It's the software that enables all the programs we use. The operating system organizes and controls the hardware on our desks and in our hands, yet most users can't say with any certainty precisely what it is that the operating system does.
It's important to realize that not all computers have operating systems. The computer that controls the microwave oven in your kitchen, for example, doesn't need an operating system. It has one set of relatively simple tasks to perform, very simple input and output methods (a keypad and an LCD screen), and simple, never-changing hardware to control. For a computer like this, an operating system would be unnecessary baggage, adding complexity where none is required. Instead, the computer in a microwave oven simply runs a single program all the time.
For computer systems that go beyond the complexity of the microwave, however, an operating system can be the key to greater operating efficiency and easier application development. All desktop computers have operating systems. The most common are the Windows family of operating systems, the UNIX family of operating systems and the Macintosh operating systems. There are hundreds of other operating systems available for special-purpose applications, including specializations for mainframes, robotics, manufacturing, real-time control systems and so on.
At the simplest level, an operating system does two things:
It manages the hardware and software resources of the computer system. These resources include such things as the processor, memory, disk space, etc.
It provides a stable, consistent way for applications to deal with the hardware without having to know all the details of the hardware.
The first task, managing the hardware and software resources, is very important, as various programs and input methods compete for the attention of the central processing unit (CPU) and demand memory, storage and input/output (I/O) bandwidth for their own purposes. In this capacity, the operating system plays the role of the good parent, making sure that each application gets the necessary resources while playing nicely with all the other applications, as well as husbanding the limited capacity of the system to the greatest good of all the users and applications.
The second task, providing a consistent application interface, is especially important if there is to be more than one of a particular type of computer using the operating system, or if the hardware making up the computer is ever open to change. A consistent application program interface (API) allows a software developer to write an application on one computer and have a high level of confidence that it will run on another computer of the same type, even if the amount of memory or the quantity of storage is different on the two machines. Even if a particular computer is unique, an operating system can ensure that applications continue to run when hardware upgrades and updates occur, because the operating system and not the application is charged with managing the hardware and the distribution of its resources. Windows 98 is a great example of the flexibility an operating system provides. Windows 98 runs on hardware from thousands of vendors. It can accommodate thousands of different printers, disk drives and special peripherals in any possible combination.
Within the broad family of operating systems, there are generally four types, categorized based on the types of computers they control and the sort of applications they support. The broad categories are:
Real-time operating system (RTOS) - Real-time operating systems are used to control machinery, scientific instruments and industrial systems. An RTOS typically has very little user-interface capability, and no end-user utilities, since the system will be a "sealed box" when delivered for use. A very important part of an RTOS is managing the resources of the computer so that a particular operation executes in precisely the same amount of time every time it occurs. In a complex machine, having a part move more quickly just because system resources are available may be just as catastrophic as having it not move at all because the system is busy.
Single-user, single task - As the name implies, this operating system is designed to manage the computer so that one user can effectively do one thing at a time. The Palm OS for Palm handheld computers is a good example of a modern single-user, single-task operating system.
Single-user, multi-tasking - This is the type of operating system most people use on their desktop and laptop computers today. Windows 98 and the MacOS are both examples of an operating system that will let a single user have several programs in operation at the same time. For example, it's entirely possible for a Windows user to be writing a note in a word processor while downloading a file from the Internet while printing the text of an e-mail message.
Multi-user - A multi-user operating system allows many different users to take advantage of the computer's resources simultaneously. The operating system must make sure that the requirements of the various users are balanced, and that each of the programs they are using has sufficient and separate resources so that a problem with one user doesn't affect the entire community of users. Unix, VMS, and mainframe operating systems, such as MVS, are examples of multi-user operating systems.
It's important to differentiate here between multi-user operating systems and single-user operating systems that support networking. Windows 2000 and Novell Netware can each support hundreds or thousands of networked users, but the operating systems themselves aren't true multi-user operating systems. The system administrator is the only "user" for Windows 2000 or Netware. The network support and all of the remote user logins the network enables are, in the overall plan of the operating system, a program being run by the administrative user.
With the different types of operating systems in mind, it's time to look at the basic functions provided by an operating system.
Note on the Mac OS Little humour!
I guess my chances of seeing a Mac up where I am are about the same as Me seeing moose and beavers in The UK  I'm afraid to fly!! 8O
Have a nice day!!
Mike |
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Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:33 am |
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MIKE_NOSTRADAMUS
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 163
Location: Northfork Recording Studios |
| more info on motherboards and cpu's |
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Here's an article Ben has a reply in one of our forums to venessa
Interesting!!
an Athlon performs the same function(s) as a Pentium in a PC - both are CPUs. A CPU is really the 'core' of any PC based setup. CPUs are measured in Hz, with most new CPUs currently running between 1GHz and 2.8GHz. A few fundamental points before I go further - AMD currently manufacture Athlon and Duron CPUs. Intel make Pentiums and Celerons. Although all CPUs are very similiar on many levels (there are some differences between CPUs such as FSB speed and L1 & L2 cache), they are physically different in terms of how they connect to a motherboard (akin to how XLRs and jack plugs are physically different yet carry the same signal) Therefore, a motherboard is either designed for an Intel chip or an AMD chip.
The compatability issue is a common discussion for audio PC users. The compatability issues many people report are in fact not down to the choice of CPU at all (at least not directly), but rather down to the choive of motherboard, or to be specific, the chipset on the motherboard. CPUs, as well as RAM, IDE Devices, PCI & AGP cards etc, all plug in to a motherboard which then handles all the data being pumped around the system from all the many peripherals and devices.
How each motherboard does this depends on the 'chipset' used on the motherboard. Different chipsets handle these tasks in slightly different ways. Although there are many different motherboard manufacturers, there are significantly fewer manufacturers of chipsets.
Popular motherboard manufacturers include ABIT, ASUS, GigaByte and Epox. There are many, many more.
There are only a few chipset manufacturers in comparison - the main players are Intel, VIA, SIS, AMD, NVIDIA and Ali Magik. Therefore you can find ASUS motherboards (for example) with VIA, Intel and SIS chipsets.
Now, where the Athlon 'problems' originate from are the VIA chipsets commonly used with Athlon CPUs. Older VIA chipsets were frankly awful for audio use to due to bad handling of the PCI bus amongst other things. On the other hand, the Intel chipsets (only available for motherboards that take Intel chips) have been reliable since day one. This is obvious enough as Intel themselves develop and build Pentiums/Celerons so are therefore in a strong position to build highly functional and stable chipsets for their own CPUs. VIA, the market leaders for AMD compatible chipsets, obviously don't have AMD technical information 'first hand', so therefore it is a little more difficult for them. On a side note, AMD have started manufacturing their own CPUs although they are vastly inferior to the Intel and AMD CPUs at present.
It must be stressed that in the last 12 months or so VIA chipsets such as the KT333 have all but ironed out all the problems associated with VIA chipsets - however, for many the damage has been done. Most specialist audio PC manufacturers build systems around Intel CPUs and chipsets. There are a few audio PC firms who are starting to introduce systems with Athlon XP CPUs and boards with the VIA KT333 chipset (usually a board such as the ASUS A7V333 or the GigaByte equivalent)
In terms of performance, up until recently Athlons have been outperforming Pentium 4s in Audio based applications due to their superior FPU (Floating Point Unit) performance which is an important factor for Audio based applications (plug-ins such as Reverb are very processor intensive) However, Intel have just about closed the gap in recent weeks in performance terms. BUT, Intel processors are still much more expensive than an AMD processor of the same speed.
If you want to look further into the technical side of the PC world, I would recommend looking at sites such as
http://www.anandtech.com
http://www.tomshardware.com
Hope this helps,
ben m
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Mike |
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Thu Mar 13, 2003 11:16 am |
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