 Welcome back everyone. Today we're going to give an introduction into computer hardware. Let's get into the computers themselves, how computers work a little bit, what are the parts of the computer, what makes the computer actually function. So that's what we're talking about today is computer hardware. So computers, you've probably all seen a desktop computer, there's a desktop computer here and in this picture we have a CPU or a tower type system and this computer also has a monitor and a keyboard, a keyboard and mouse. So whenever you think about computers or you think about digital devices, you can always think about them in terms of inputs and outputs. So in this computer we have kind of the processor, the central processing unit. What are the inputs into this processing unit? Well the inputs would be something like the keyboard and the mouse. What are the outputs? What do we get out of the computer? Well we get interaction with the display so whatever is showing on the display is outputted output by the computer. Now we can also have things like printers which would output. We can have network connections which would be both an input and an output if we're trying to communicate with the internet. We both have to send data out and also receive data from the network. So whenever you think about computers you can think about almost everything in terms of inputs or outputs. Is it an input? Is it an output? In this case from the human one of the easiest ways for a human to get data into the computer is by a keyboard and mouse and there's actually a lot of really interesting research on why the keyboard was selected and why the mouse was finally selected. Why do you think that we use mice whenever we're trying to do some precision work? Why don't we use a joystick or why don't we use a glove that fits over our hand? Something like that. Well so far the mouse has been one of the most precise, most accurate, and cheapest ways and relatively intuitive ways for humans to interact with the computer screen. Keyboard as well. If you want to enter information in now the keyboard is basically coming almost exactly from the typewriter but the interesting thing about the keyboard like think about why do we put the keys where they are on the keyboard and there's a lot of history to why the keys are in the certain place that we put them. Most people's keyboards are in what we call a QWERTY configuration, QWERTY configuration. If you look at the top left hand side of your keyboard you'll probably see QWERTY and we call that a QWERTY keyboard. Now the reason that we use a QWERTY keyboard kind of as the standard keyboard is because we copied them over from typewriters. Well why did typewriters use that configuration for typewriters? Well it turns out that they actually had a different configuration for typewriters initially but people were typing so fast with a typewriter that the typewriter would get jammed. So they actually gave the QWERTY keyboard to on typewriters so that way people would have to slow down when they're typing and the typewriter wouldn't get jammed. So basically we've just kind of inherited this system that might not actually be as efficient as possible but it is relatively easy to use. It is known by most people and now that people are comfortable with a certain keyboard layout they don't want to change very easily. So there's a lot of history behind the keyboard and mouse. I'm not really going to talk more about these but these are inputs into the computer. Something like a display or a monitor would be an output. Now another input into the system, two more inputs on here would be this button. This is a power input. It controls whether power is input or not and it controls whether the computer turns on or not and then there's also this CD or DVD player and it could be both an input or an output. If it's a DVD player then the DVD is giving data to the computer so it's an input. If you're writing a CD or writing a DVD then you're outputting data from the computer. So here we basically have the computer which is this tower here. This is the actual computer. The monitor which is this TV-looking screen. The keyboard which is the keyboard and then the mouse which is this little round thing over here. All of those are basically one of the cheapest and most efficient ways that we can interact with different computer systems. Now this is the back of the computer so if you look at the picture on the left to the back of this computer from the top this top part here this whole section you might be able to guess what it is from this plug. This is the power source. This is where all of the computer gets its power from and we'll talk about the inside in a second but the power source takes power from the wall and powers the rest of the computer. From the top there's this kind of let's say holes in the back of the computer and that is for ventilation. It's not a fan. There is a fan inside the power source but here there's not a fan in the back. This is just for air to come in. The computer gets really really hot obviously and if you put it in an enclosed case and new air can't get in then the computer can overheat and maybe even catch on fire if it gets hot enough. That's one thing. You have to have a flow of air so these cases are designed to keep the computer cool. Next from the left hand side we can see this gray cable with a purple adapter. This is a keyboard cable and then the green is a mouse cable and this is an older standard. Most of them now will be USB but sometimes you see older keyboards with this purple round plug. This is called a PS2 plug and the same for a mouse. These are the older standards. Next it looks like this is a serial output. This is kind of for something probably like a joystick or some yeah basically just different types of external adapters like keyboards or joysticks. This long pink adapter or connector is for parallel printers. You don't really see them too much anymore. Most things have gone to USB but this one still has a printer basically used almost only for printers and some other types of adapters but mostly for printers. We have keyboard mouse basically joystick printers and then there's this probably looks like it's a sound port. I can't really tell from this picture. Then there's a couple adapters that look similar to USB but they're a little bit round and on this this is probably actually fire wire. Fire wire. Fire wire now you don't see them really too much anymore but they're an older standard of very fast connection that gives you direct memory access. They're usually used for things like cameras like video cameras and transferring large amounts of video really quick. There's two plugs plugged in here and these are just standard USB ports so USB and then next there's this kind of square connector and that's for a network cable. That's where you would plug a cable in that goes into your Wi-Fi router or just an internet cable basically. We'll talk more about what that internet cable is probably next week but an internet cable or network cable can be plugged into there. And then you have all of this kind of pink green and blue connectors. These are for audio out so basically microphone speakers and auxiliary. So if you have let's say I don't know some sort of adapter for your guitar you can plug your guitar into this auxiliary port and record your guitar. So a couple different connectors for sound. So this means that there's a sound card built into the computer and network card built into the computer and yeah all of this plate right here is built into the motherboard of the computer. Then at the bottom so we have a power source built-in connectors vent and then down here we have this kind of blue adapter. This is a VGA connector for your monitor and then this white adapter is a DMI adapter for also for a monitor but this is a high definition high resolution connector for monitors. So VGA is a little bit lower lower quality connection DVI is higher quality. You don't really see DVI too much anymore. We've gone to a different standard I'll talk about in a second. So this card in here is an external graphics card external graphics card okay and then it looks like a vent down here and then there's another sound card. So maybe the sound card that's built into the computer isn't very good quality. So they added another sound card maybe it's higher quality. The sound card does actually make or at least it used to make quite a bit of difference in the quality of the sound that would come out of it. Yeah so sound cards you don't really see them externally too much anymore and then there's another network cable or a network adapter in here. So maybe this network adapter is actually slower than the extra network adapter that they put inside. So this has two network adapters two sound cards one built-in one external and then as far as I can see I don't see a VGA connector so it looks like one external graphics card or yeah graphics card okay. So yeah this is the back of the computer this is also the back of a newer computer and this board over here is actually the motherboard that fits inside of this case. So if we took the case off of the computer it would look something kind of like this. So I'm going to show a little bit closer up the back of the computer. So here we have the built-in sound card again for speakers audio input things like that and then we have a unified ps2 connector. So because it's purple and green it will accept either a keyboard or a mouse and then it has two usb ports for presumably you know a keyboard or a mouse and then we have a network adapter so a network adapter. This is probably either esata or maybe a strange colored usb port I'm guessing it's esata which would be like for an external hard drive so a connector for an external hard drive and then this looks like it's probably a new type of usb and then these are two video connectors newer type of video connectors not vga not dbi hdmi so this is an hdmi actually I think it's two different standards of hdmi but this is at least an hdmi adapter so probably for dual monitors so from this one computer you can plug in two monitors to it these are I believe also they could be for wireless but I'm pretty sure they're for networking actually they might be for wireless now that I look at it so this could be for a wi-fi connection and if you have three it could be to try to do some duplexing or just get a better signal I'm not really sure about this board then there's two more usb connectors and actually these are usb so this red one over here is probably usb as well I'm not sure why they're colored red probably just to look cool but the blue ones are normally usb 3.0 which is the newest standard so this is also the back of a newer newer high-end motherboard okay so this is a motherboard this is a computer inside its case the metal part is the case so let's see a little bit closer what a motherboard looks like okay so if we were looking inside the case this is the computer case this is basically what most computers look like there's this green board and this is what we call the motherboard you can see the pink probably printer adapter or printer connector right here and that would be sticking out of the back of the computer this is the the front is on the left the back what we just saw was on the right hand side and then we can see a couple things so where do we start okay up here first there's this orange cable there's this orange cable and this looks like it's a SATA cable SATA cable and it is going to a cd rom so this is the back of a cd rom and then you would put the cd in the front of the computer up here this is a cd rom and this is a SATA connection into the keyboard this other cable there's two cables one's orange and one has a white cable on it this white cable and the cables close to it are power so this big box right here is the power source for the entire computer now the power source is coming out of the bottom or coming out of the bottom the power source are cables and all of this is power going into the motherboard and the motherboard is like the main brain of the entire computer it basically controls everything so this needs a lot of power from the power source and then out of the back of the power source you have power going to like cd rom i think this is probably a floppy disk um and then hard drives are down here you can see the power cable is running down so there's two hard drives in here um and all of that needs power so all of that power is coming from the power source so there's a lot of cables coming out um let's see uh right so we have the cd rom here uh it's connected by SATA and it's receiving power then we have the floppy disk which you probably won't see anymore in any computers and um it has power coming in this this yellow cable right here and then there's a ribbon cable which is kind of an older standard um that is coming down and into the motherboard and connecting directly to the motherboard so um yeah floppy drives this one's using a ribbon cable we used to use ribbon cables for everything um for every external thing like a cd rom would have a ribbon cable um hard drives would have a ribbon cable but now we've gone to a much faster standard that's SATA this blue cable and this orange cable okay so next let's see um we have basically a lot of this is for ventilation you see these holes right here that lets air come into the computer case and circulate around and then go out um if you go all the way down there's two hard drives here um the hard drives are not part of the motherboard but they are connected to the motherboard by this blue wire this blue wire is also a SATA cable SATA cable so there's two hard drives inside this computer um so two hard drives floppy disk cd rom power um power source and then this big green thing is the motherboard now let's look at the motherboard a little bit closer so on the motherboard uh we have this big silver thing right here and this silver thing is called a heat sink heat sink basically it takes heat away from whatever is underneath so underneath this silver thing is a chip and that chip is the most important chip in the computer called the processor or the central processing unit okay so there's the central processing unit underneath the silver thing and it gets really hot so we put a heat sink on it and that heat sink helps to keep the processor cool whenever it's doing a lot of work the processor looks very similar to this black chip right here um but a little bit different okay so there's another there's a lot of different chips on this um on this motherboard uh the processor looks similar to this black chip but again a little bit different um the next thing that I see here there's a little chip that's long and flat right here and it is called random access memory so this is one stick or one dim of random access memory we'll talk about random access memory in a second this is power like we said this is a SATA connector for the CD-ROM or DVD these are all of the ports that are sticking out at the back of the computer then there are PCIe connections so you I don't know if you can see it really well but there's actually a card sticking into this white connector so there's an external card sticking in or expansion we call it an expansion card so this expansion card sits or fits into this white slot and then we can add additional chips and additional functionality to our computer by putting more cards into the computer um now a lot of computers today have cards built in but we can expand or we can change out cards and change out functionality depending on what we need the computer to do so this looks like it's probably some sort of maybe a modem or a network cable and these slots are called PCI slots PCI okay so there's this external expansion card and the the expansion card is also sticking out of the back and that's where we would plug in network cables it fits into this slot in the motherboard and then it expands what the motherboard is capable of okay so next this is the motherboard a little bit more up close a slightly different type of motherboard um so let's look at what are the what are the biggest features so this these connectors up here would be actually sticking out of the back of the computer okay so this connector would stick out of the back of the computer this slot is for the process the central processing unit this is where we would put the central processing unit in this is only a motherboard no extra adapters or anything like that so this is where the processor would go um this is probably i'm not sure exactly but maybe built-in video um yeah i'm guessing it's built-in video because it looks like there's a heat sink here which means it gets very hot it does have its own video adapter it looks like which means that it must have some sort of gpu built into um the the motherboard uh power would fit in this white white slot down here um this battery is to call the CMOS battery and it's to keep settings in your computer so whenever you set up your computer um not windows or anything but even before windows if you set the time on your computer this battery helps to save that time even if you unplug your computer so the battery basically keeps very very basic configurations um even if you unplug unplug your computer um this stick right here so this orange slot the horizontal slot is for random access memory it would the RAM stick would fit down in there so there's two slots for random access memory the other orange slot the vertical one is for PCIe so there's an extra card that would sit in here um now that card could be anything it could be for uh video it could be for audio it could be um maybe it controls external hard drives maybe it connects to a power plant uh control system it could do all sorts of things so you can fit any card you want in there as long as it's a PCIe generation two card okay now there's PCIe one these are kind of um they're just smaller ones it's different standard but these also um are just expansion cards that would fit in there as well um and then this is also I believe uh full-sized PCI so this is a new type of PCI probably faster um faster newer these other ones are a little bit slower they support an older standard but they would still work as well um up here is probably the circuit that controls audio I'm not really sure what all this is going to do and then serial ATA so all of these connectors would be the SATA connectors that would control like external hard drives CD ROMs things like that okay so there would be a cable coming out of here all right so that's pretty much a motherboard um the main main parts that you need to be aware of are the connectors on the back um where the central processing unit would sit and then how we put in RAM as long as you have a hard drive RAM a CPU and power then that's all you need to run a computer well and the motherboard of course