Contents

Section 1 Computer fundamentals - building blocks in hardware.

1. A brief history of the PC
2. The components of the microcomputer.
3. Intel’s Microprocessor family for the PC.
4. Memory, memory addressing & structure
5. Port & I/O addressing
6. Control bus. Address bus. Data bus. Bus Architectures (The expansion busses.)
7 Peripheral devices. Parallel & Serial communications. Joystick ports.
8. Keyboard and keyboard interface.
9. Video display adapter. Screen modes
10. The support microcontrollers.
11. Software Interrupt Vectors & Memory Structure
12. Interrupt Request Allocation.
13. Floppy controller
14. Hard disk controller.
15. SCSI adapters.
16. CD ROM drives & interfaces.
17. Sound cards. Sound Blaster etc.
18. Video cards. Video Blaster etc
19. The system configuration in CMOS.
20. Tape drive interfaces - QIC format, DAT etc.
21. Other interface devices - A to D, D to A converters.
22. PCMCIA adapters.
23. External hardware devices - modems, light pens & mice.
24. Turbo, reset and led displays.
25. Motherboard design - Cpu speed enhancement.
26. Hardware diagnostic tools.
27. Hardware handling.
28. Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)
29. What happens when it goes wrong. Fault finding.
30. Power supplies - why switch mode?

Section 2.0 Software, firmware & Operating System software

1. BIOS & Power On Self Test
2. DOS Startup. DOS Disk structures. Dos Features
3. Other Operating systems - CP/M 86, Windows 1 to 3.11, Windows NT, OS/2, Windows 95, Novell’s DOS
4. Application software - DOS - Com’s Exe’s, batch programs. Windows apps. DOS Utilities.
5. Programming.
6. Networking & redirection.
7. Software diagnostics.
8. Benchmarks
9. Memory Configuration. - the use of Extended memory and EMM386.exe


Section 3.0 Problem areas

1. Software reliability “Bugs” etc.
2. Hardware reliability, we take it for granted.
3. Security of data - includes backup.
4. User education.
5. Support training.
6. Application knowledge and information sources.
7. Battery (NiCd) pack care.
8. Virus Protection.


Section 4.0 Comedy in computing - keeping your sense of humour.

1. ARF
2. Wierd error messages.
3. The software joke.
4. Ghost in the machine.


Section 5.0 Information, we want information.

1. Looking after your information - support, diagnostics, tools.
2. External sources of informations - the Internet.
3. Digital networking


Section 6.0 The “Standard” PC Specification
1 The entry level or "standard pc" for that year.

Section 7.0 New developments in computing.
1 Interesting times.

Bibliography

Appendices