Computer maintenance
Blog Posted:6/25/2011 2:16:00 AM
Computer Repair ….2008/10
I have been fixing my own computers since 1990…
Its all about speed two thousand 500 million times per second
2.5 gig per second is about fast enough
for emailing etc currently in 2010…if its only 1 gig it will run so slow you think its stopped for coffee…
if buying ask about speed of cpu ..(LIKE THE BRAIN IN MOBILE PHONES TOO….which is a computer chip cpu attached and controlling a 2 way radio which puts out radio waves into your ear, don’t use em too long)
if it says duo cpu it means 2 cpu chips in the box…faster better…
The programs that we use always get bigger each year with lotsa bells and whistles that we don’t need really …so you are forced every few years to buy a faster computer to keep up with the bigger more complex programs and games ….like a dog chasing its tail…
You turn on the computer it looks at the bios chip which is programmable by you when you run setup by touching del (or something else) when it starts up…you tell it such things as what type of hard drive it has and floppy or cd rom too…this can be done automaticly by the smart computer now days …earlier you had to know how many cylinders , heads and sectors were in the hard disk (hard drive) how many megabyte (million pieces of storage room, pieces a few bytes to a word)
The early 10 (million) megabyte hard disk was about 5lbs weight and boat anchor size. You could store the txt of several bibles on the platters electronicly much like we recorded a cassette on tape at one time, very similiar. It was quickly filled by programs which ran at 10 million times a second on the early xt 8088 in 1988 on turbo hi speed?…a lot faster than the rooms full of earlier computers, which were full of vacuum tubes and relays, lots of power to light the tubes needed its own power station almost, and punched a piece of paper for you to decode. So if your on board battery a round silver one goes flat the computer forgets stuff and needs a new battery, wants you to run setup , then it will always know it has a 20 gig hard disk and 1 floppy etc . One of the first things the computer CPU (cpu Brain chip it has a square black metal heat sink, lots of metal to transfer heat away from it, a fan on top of it cooling it, sits in the middle of the main board ) What the CPU looks for, is memory to run programs, if its not seated properly, the memory, it will stop the computer …seems dead sometimes, (black screen) if you carefully reseat the long memory chip/s First discharge yourself by touching the metal power box at the back of computer better safe than sorry!
Making sure the the levers on each end are locked in, your computer will now start.? Perhaps.
So you hear noises as it checks all the bits and pieces on the board and connected to it
So your computer is running and you want to write your life story …good.
As you type text into the page of Microsoft word, and before you save it, its stored in the temporary memory the long memory chip we talked about, you have done a chapter now you save it to your story.doc to documents on the c:\documents\ a story.doc etc on your hard drive.
Where you find it later under computer documents? less u saved it elsewhere. Watch where you are saving it which bloody place spot.
When you close the writing program it will ask you to save it as? Do that if you haven’t done so already…or it wont be saved hey. Easy Use a name u rememberThe path to the drawer the file is in, probably found under the document folder .
Its like storing the file in drawers or cupboards …back in the days of dos before windows it was boring not much color and you would make a batch file to start xtgold, a word editor or deleter of files program in 1990, handy when you never had any room on the hard disk, how it was. When you had to get rid of files to make room for some game …All voltages in the computer are low 12 volt 5 volts etc
The 240 volts is safely inside a metal box no dangerous voltages at all to touch EXCEPT MAYBE AT THE BACK OF THE POWER ON OFF SWITCH WHICH MAY BE 240VOLTS BE CAREFUL THERE Lets be clear C: drive is where you find most things on board the computer PROGRAMS ETC…D: might be the cd player or dvd …can be the extra part of the c: drive too…A: drive is where you push in a floppy disk square type 1.4 megabytes storage ….used once for loading programs…nowdays we use the cd / dvd drive to load crappy programs on our computer….also to write backups of our wanted files to the writable types of dvd/cd
So in dos you would type in copy con g.bat…to make a useful file to use TYPE IN BELOW
C:\..............enter
Cd xtgold…….enter
Xtgold…..enter…..(probably say xtgold.exe or com )
Control plus z………..would save it….
And a batch file would appear on the c:\ drive called g.bat
Which when g was typed in would find the path to the program and load it If you wanted it autoloaded you would put g.bat in the autoexec.bat file, which looked for things to load when you started the computer. So Bill Gates sold us windows 30 and there was lots of cursing , till they got it right?
When you are working inside the box with the computer turned off remember static electricity and place a hand on the metal power box at the back to discharge yourself . or suffer the static discharge! Provided the computer is plugged into the wall power connection it should discharge you through the earth lead.
When my computer won’t work and I have tried the memory stick or sticks to see if they are reseated properly…I think about vibration as a computer is always buzzing and things move a bit sometimes…So I gently pull cables and leads off and put them back on .
If you are rough with computers they break , board damage etc …I know! DON’T B ROUGH!
Discharge yourself OFTEN better safe than sorry!
I have often found a computer will start after doing the reseating on all connecters between hard drives, cd roms, floppys , and the cables on the main board …also try reseating the cards on the main board , (any unseated board or cable can stop a computer) they can vibrate out a bit , the possible video card specially if you have no piccys. You may have to use the possible onboard video card then , maybe turn it on in bios setup? Discharge yourself again better safe than sorry!
Here is where its like the 50s when you changed a vacuum tube audio amplifier to get sound in the old bakelite radio again.
So your sound card don’t work …put in another and hopefully find a driver for it on the computer or the internet…..search on google online for the brand name part, free driver download
So your video is dead? there maybe onboard video to use, if you have a plug in card too and the plugin died remove it and plug into the onboard one . otherwise if not replace it with another video card,
Driver fun again. Discharge yourself again better safe than sorry!
If your memory stick got fried dead computer, black screen(static electricity caused probably) put in another stick and restart the computer…hopefully fix it If your hard disk dies, go to setup hit del to do it…(in setup ask to boot from cd first drive bootup) boot from cdrom with windows disk and install windows again, of course you may lose some of your story files on c: drive but that’s why you burn copys of em to cd or dvd so you have a copy of your story files txt etc! If you still can’t format the drive still put in another hard disk c: install windows if necessary and you are back in business..
So you are on the internet emailing, be careful what you open there
because the nasties want to stuff up your computer so they can sell you protection from the nasties….download avg free antivirus… takes a while but it keeps nasties crap out of your computer
By Don Johnson JUNE-3-2010 djohnson@scullywag.com 0419642617