© 2000 Charles Abzug

Readings: A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC:

1. INTRODUCTION (pages xxxiii-xxxvii) , and especially the warnings on pages xxxvii-xxxix, "Protect Yourself, the Hardware, and the Software".
2. Chapter 1: How Computers Work - An Introduction (pages 1 through 31 only; note that pages 32-52 contain information that every Computer Scientist should know; nevertheless that material is not required for this course.)
3. Chapter 2: How Software and Hardware Work Together (pages 65-105. Please read for fundamental concepts only. For this purpose, it is enough to read the material on the DOS operating system only, even though this is out of date. You can safely ignore for this course the material on the various "Windows" versions. Also, skip the material on "Nuts and Bolts" and on "Norton Utilities". This is all valuable material, but you can easily defer it until after the course is over, when you have some spare time)

Review and Study: Review all of the "Chapter Summary" and "Key Terms" on Andrews' pages 52-58, and Review Questions 1-6, 11, and 13 on page 59. Also, study and review all of the "Chapter Summary" and "Key Terms" on Andrews' pages 105-107, and Review Questions 1, 6, 7, 9-13, and 24 on pages 107-108. Also, do the relevant portion of Review Questions on Computer Basics.

Learning by Doing: Perform as many as time allows of the tasks described below from the "Projects" section of Andrews' Chapters 1 and 2:

1. "Observing the Boot Process on page 109; see also the variant at the bottom of page 110.
2. "Creating a Startup Disk" on page 111. To access the "Control Panel", first activate the "Start" button, then select "Settings" from the "Start" menu, and then choose "Control Panel".
3. Either "Using Device Manager" or "Using MSD" on page 111;

Readings: A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC:

1. Appendix D: The Hexadecimal Number System and Memory Addressing (pages D1 through D10).

 

2. Chapter 3: The System Board (pages 113 to middle of 160. Please just skim ov4r the detailed comparisons of different models of CPU, different CPU sockets, different chipsets, and different ROM-BIOS. These details are very significant for people who make a livelihood building and servicing PCs, but they are not at all important from the standpoint of conveying understanding of significant concepts and principles of Computer Science. Just skim over those parts of the text and get on to the important subjects.) Near the top of page 136, please add the following item to the bulleted list appearing there:

"n For older BIOS, is the BIOS Y2k compliant?"

NOTE on page 113 and in Appendix D that the correct spelling is "Hexadecimal". The spelling that appears on page 113 and in a few other instances of this word in Andrews' book, is an abomination.

NOTE on page 120 that the maximum number of memory addresses in the most recent PCs is now 64 Gigabytes.

NOTE on the bottom of page 129 that while the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) has sold workstations containing the MIPS RISC chip, DEC itself originally, and now its successor Compaq Computer Corporation, manufactures its own RISC chip called the Alpha. The MIPS chip, although it has appeared in some DEC products, is/was not manufactured by DEC/Compaq.

NOTE on pages 124-5 that as of the Fall of 1999, 1Mbyte of L2 cache is commonly used on PC systemboards.

3. Chapter 11: Electricity and Power Supplies (pages 555 through 588)

Review and Study: Review all of the Chapter Summary and Key Terms (pages 160-165), and Review Questions nos. 3, 5-7, 9, 14, 23-27, 29, and 32 on pages 165-166. Also, do the relevant portion of Review Questions on Computer Basics. Study and review all of the "Chapter Summary" and "Key Terms" (Andrews' pages 588-591), and Review Questions nos. 2-3, 6, 9, 11, 13-14, 21, and 26-27 on page 592. Also, do the Review Questions on Computer Power Supplies

Point to Ponder: With respect to the material on page 135, what effect does the higher bus speed have on the operation of plug-in cards? of RAM? of L2 cache? of L1 cache?

Learning by Doing: You will be assigned to a group to perform the tasks described below from the "Projects" section of Andrews' chapters 3 and 10:

0. "Examine the system board" on pages 168-173.
1. "Total Wattage Used by Your Computer System" on page 596, and
2. "Research the market for a UPS for Your Computer System" on page 595.

Readings: A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC:

1. Chapter 5: Floppy Drives (pages 239-255 and 258-263).
2. Chapter 6: Introduction to Hard Drives (pages 279 through 300, skip the section on VFAT on page 300, and continue from bottom of page 300 through page 309; also, pages 317 bottom through page 323).

NOTE on page 280, bottom paragraph, that the term head is mistakenly used to refer to a single surface of a magnetic disk platter. This term actually connotes a Read/Write head that both reads from and writes to a single side of a disk platter. The number of heads in a hard disk assembly is equal to the number of platter surfaces used for storing data. Nevertheless, a head is not a surface and a surface is not a head.

3. Optional Additional Reading: Appendix F: Behind the Scenes with Debug (pages F1 through F18). Careful reading of this section, and working through the examples in detail, can provide substantial insight that will be useful throughout your career as a Computer Scientist.

Point to Ponder: With respect to the optional reading material on Andrews' pages F7-F9, note in Figure F-7 that four bytes of the FAT are used up by the Media Descriptor Byte and three fill characters. The calculation that occupies much of page F-9 indicates a precise number of sectors of FAT required to service the example disk drive, without allowing even one additional byte of space to accommodate these four bytes of information. Yet, the second copy of the FAT is shown in Figure F-8 as beginning immediately following the precise amount of space calculated for the first copy of the FAT. Does this mean that some number of clusters are "left over" and not represented in the FAT? Where does the space come from for these four bytes?

Review and Study: Review the relevant portions of the Chapter Summary and Key Terms (pages 273-275), and Review Questions nos. 2, 4-5, 7-9, and 11 on page 275. Also, do the relevant portion of Review Questions on WIntel Computer Hardware. Study and review relevant portions of the Chapter Summary and Key Terms (pages 336-341), and Review Questions nos. 1-5, 21, and 24 on pages 341-342. Also, do the relevant portion of Review Questions on WIntel Computer Hardware.

Learning by Doing: You will be assigned to a group to perform the tasks described below from the "Projects" section of Andrews' Chapters 5 and 6.

1. "Using Diagnostic Software", which starts on page 277.
2. "Examine the First Entries at the Beginning of a Hard Drive" on page 343.
3. "Comparing the Data Storage Cost of Devices" on page 344.

Readings: A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC:

1. Chapter 7: Hard Drive Installation and Support (pages 347 through 364, and "An Ounce of Prevention" on page 368).
2. Chapter 4: Understanding and Managing Memory (pages 177 through 208 top, and 212-229)

Review and Study: Review the relevant portions of the Chapter Summary and Key Terms (pages 398-400), and Review Questions nos. 11-12, 19-21, and 30 on pages 400-401. Also, do the relevant portion of Review Questions on Computer Basics. Study and review relevant portions of the Chapter Summary and Key Terms (pages 229-234), and Review Questions nos.5-6, 12, 15, and 17-18 on pages 234-235.

Learning by Doing: You will be assigned to a group to perform the tasks described below from the "Projects" section of Andrews' chapters 4 and 7:

1. "Data Recovery" on page 402.
2. "The Partition Table" on page 403.
3. "Research Using the Internet" on page 403.
4. "Preparing for Disaster" on page 404.
5. "Planning and Pricing Memory" on page 236.
6. "Plan Memory Installation" on page 238.

Readings: A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC:

1. Chapter 14: Purchasing a PC or Building Your Own (pages 745 through 794).

1. URLs for system board manufacturers: Table 3-2, page 119
2. URL for BIOS upgrades: Figure 3-15, page 140
3. Summary of PC buses: Table 3-10, page 145
4. Properties of Floppy Disks of Various Types: Table 5-1, page 240
5. Structure of Root Directory for floppy disk: Table 5-4, page 250
6. FORMAT Command Options (DOS): Table 5-6, page 252
7. Summary of DEBUG commands: Table F-1 and Figure F-7, pages F3 and F-8
8. Example Root Directory entries for Hard Disk: Figure F-13 and Table F-2, page F15; see also Table 5-4 on page 240.
9. File Attributes for FAT-organized disks: Table 5-5, page 251
10. Files that get renamed between DOS and Windows 95: Table 7-3, page 367
11. Layout of the Boot Record for a floppy disk: Table 6-4, page 298
12. Media Descriptor Byte: Table 6-5, page 298

Last revised 08 May 2000