All hard drives share the same basic structure, varying only in how each part is used and the quality of the parts themselves. The platters, spindle motor, heads, and head actuator are inside the drive, all sealed from the outside environment. This chamber is often called the head disk assembly (HDA). The HDA is rarely opened, except by professionals. On the...

Hammer. It’s a name that makes you think of power, and it’s an image that is all too real for Intel. We know that Intel decided that it needed a new architecture when it designed the current breeds of Pentium IV. Intel created what it dubbed the NetBurst architecture. Within this new architecture, it made use of a few new technologies: Hyper...

CDs are now the main medium for distribution of software. If you go to the computer shop to buy a program, you’ll have to look a lot harder to get that program in a diskette format. In some cases, you’ll have to special order it. Why? Simple. A diskette can hold only 1.44 MB of data. Therefore, a software company would have to use several diskettes...

The Original Celeron is the name given to Intel’s famous entry-level processor. Released in 1998 along with the 350 and 400MHz Pentium II’s, the original Celeron was basically a Pentium II with the L2 cache ripped off. The first of its line was a 266MHz model operating on the 66MHz bus speed. If you took the black cartridge off of a Pentium II, then...

The motherboard is generally thought to be the most important part of a computer. And yes, it is. However, the chipset on the motherboard is the most important part of the board itself as it defines almost everything about the system. We have said that the CPU is the brain, the BIOS is the nervous system. Well, the chipset is like the heart. A...

Cooling is a very important issue in the world of personal computing. Processors today run suprisingly hot. Without any cooling, most processors today would burn up in only a few seconds. Without adequate cooling, processors will still run for a while, but may begin to cause random errors to more serious errors. Some processors, such as the Pentium IV, have...

Do you remember back when you first installed Windows or when you first bought your computer? Remember how fast it was? It sat there waiting for you to tell it to do something. and when you did, it was just plain quick. Now, when you do so, you wait for the hard drive to click itself to death and it starts to smoke when you play Solitaire. Well, what the hell?...

On this page, I’ll cover file structure on a hard drive. Tracks, sectors, cylinders, etc. Plus I’ll cover what happens when you format and partition a drive. Basically, tracks, sectors, and cylinders are the divisions of the hard drive platters where information is stored. A track is a concentric ring around the platter containing information. Since...

Formatting is another necessary step to hard drive preparation, and very simple. In most cases, when installing a new hard drive, all you need to do is a high-level format. It is usually the final step in preparation and must be done after partitioning. When preparing a new drive, use the “FORMAT C: /S” command, entered at a command prompt. This...

Floppy drives are bought off the shelf already configured for your computer. But, sometimes, if you are installing a used drive, you may need to reconfigure it. For this reason, and informational purposes, I will discuss a little about their configuration. A note though: in order to properly configure a floppy drive, you ...

Installing an external modem is relatively easy. You don’t even have to open the case. All you need is a flathead screwdriver and a modem cable. Your modem may not come with a modem cable, so check the packaging.Turn off the computer. Take your modem cable, connect one end to the computer’s serial or USB port and the other to the back of the...

Win95 won’t start and says “Protection Error…System Halted” This message could indicate a configuration problem or just a minor glitch in Windows thinking. If the error repeats after restarting, then you’ll have to dig for it. To track it down, hit F8 during bootup and select “Logged...

128K NOT OK, PARITY DISABLED The first 128K of your RAM has failed the POST. First, reboot. If the error is still there, you likely have a problem with your RAM. Try switching banks of memory. Move your second bank to your first bank, and vice versa. If you really want to fix the problem, replace the SIMM that is located...

Not too long ago, we had a new contender come out in the CPU world. Its development was cloaked, no one had heard of it before for awhile. Slowly, though secrets started leaking (nice marketing) and people started talking about this little processor. Upon it’s release, absent was the talk of kick-ass speed and gaming power. No, instead, we heard about...

Installing an expansion card is very simple.Turn off the computer, unplug it, and take the case off. >Find the slot that your new card will fit into. If you are installing an AGP card, then spot the AGP slot, usually the shortest slot and is brown. If you are installing a PCI card, then find a PCI slot,...