Westside TI challenge
westside
Entry ID #: 3650
Created: Wed, Jan 11, 2017 12:18 PM
We chose to take apart an old computer and look at the different chips inside because we had a spare junk computer lying around with no other good use due to it being extremely outdated, so we decided to put it to some use since it was going to end up in the trash anyways. Inside we found many different kinds of chips but to keep things brief we’re specifically going to go over the functions of the hard drive, RAM, ROM, and CPU. First, we’ll go over the CPU and how it functions. The CPU, or central processing unit, is essentially the brain of the computer, it takes data input and converts it to information output to everything else. Next, the RAM, or random access memory, is basically what allows your computer to remember things as long as it is turned on (in layman's terms) so it can keep multiple programs open and remember what was happening with each of them and generally speaking, the higher your RAM the more your computer can handle being open. Then there’s the ROM, or read-only memory, which can remember things even when the computer is shut off such as how to operate the keyboard, the BIOS (basic input/output system) and things similar to that. And last but not least is the hard drive which is what all the data on the computer is stored in, word documents, applications, programs, games; it all goes here to be kept for storage. In the end we learned that while they’re made of different materials, computers function very similarly to how a brain would with RAM being similar to short term memory, ROM being more like long term memory, the CPU functioning similarly to our brain processing information, and the hard drive being similar to how our brain stores information.