Study Guide a Plus

8/7/2019 Study Guide a Plus

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Copyright 2002-2003 Aries Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A+ Hardware Certification Study Guide

This guide was created to help you pass your certification exam. To help increase yourchance of passing, be able to recall or explain in your own words everything in thisguide. Some of it should be memorized and some must simply be understood. Though itis not possible to cover everything that might be tested, if you can master all of thismaterial, you will have a much better chance of passing. Good Luck!

Contents

Motherboard Components

Expansion Slots

IRQ, COM, I/O

DMA Channels

RAM

CPUs

POST Beeps

IDE

SCSI

Peripheral Connectors

Laser Printing

Modem Commands

Parallel Versus Serial

NICs

Acronyms and Terms

Motherboard Components (Lesson 16, 17)


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Expansion Slots (16, 39)

Bus Type Year Bus Width (bits) Speed in MHz

8 8.33ISA 1984

16 8.33EISA (Extended ISA) 1987 8, 16, or 32 8.33

16 10MCA (outdated) 1987

32 10

VL-Bus

VESA Local Bus(outdated)

1992 32 33.33

32 33.33

64 33.33PCI 1992

64 66.67

32 66

32 66AGP 1996

32 66

Note: Be able to recognize what each of these slots look like.back to contents

IRQs, COM Ports, I/O Addresses (17)

COM Port IRQ Number Input/Output Address

1 4 3F8-3FF

2 3 2F8-2FF

3 4 3E8-3EF

4 3 2E8-2EF

IRQ Number Device

0 Timer


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1 Keyboard

2 Cascaded to 9 (redirected to 9)

3 COM2 (serial port 2), COM4 (serial port4)

4 COM1 (serial port 1), COM3 (serial port 3)

5 Available (commonly LPT2 or sound card)

6 Floppy drive

7 LPT1 (parallel port 1, printers)

8 Real-time clock

9 IRQ 2 redirected (available)

10 Available (commonly network adapter)

11 Available (commonly SCSI adapter)

12 Available (PS/2 mouse if present)

13 Math coprocessor

14 Primary IDE controller

15 Available/Secondary IDE controller

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DMA Channels (17)

DMA Channel Resource

0 Memory refresh

1 8-bit sound card

2 Floppy drive controller (FDC)

3ECP parallel port or

8-bit sound card

4 DMA controller

5 16-bit sound card

7 16-bit sound card


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Types of RAM (17, 26, 27, 36)

Type of RAM Application Comments

SRAM cachemuch faster and moreexpensive than DRAM, doesnot need to be refreshed

DRAM

main memoryvideo cardsnetwork cardshard diskscontroller cards

higher capacity than SRAM,must be refreshed

FPM DRAMmain memoryvideo memory

outdated

EDO DRAMmain memoryvideo memory

improved version of FPMDRAM but is now obsolete

SDRAMmain memoryvideo memory

synchronizes with CPU clockspeed to eliminate wait states

DRDRAMmain memoryvideo memory

enhanced version of RDRAMmade by the Rambuscompany

VRAM video memorysomewhat outdated, used forolder high-end video cards

WRAM video memoryhigh bandwidth and lessexpensive than VRAM

MDRAM video memory almost as fast as SGRAM

SGRAM video memoryalmost as fast at VRAM butless expensive

DDR SGRAM video memory faster than SGRAM

RAM Modules (17, 26, 27, 36)

RAMModule

Type of RAMAvailable Formatsfor Motherboards

EDO DRAM 30-pin SIMM or 72-pin SIMMSIMM

FPM DRAM 30-pin SIMM or 72-pin SIMM


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POST Beeps (18)

Beeps Meaning

None

You should hear at least 1 beep when the POST is complete. Ifyou do not hear a beep, check to make sure the speaker isworking. If your speaker is working, no beeps means either themotherboard has failed or the power supply is bad.

1 Successful POST

2, 3 or 4 Either the video card or main memory has an error.

4 Bad timer oscillator

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IDE (32, 33)

IDE Hard Drive Installation in Four Steps

1. Set the proper jumpers to make the drive a master or slave.

2. Install the drive into a bay and secure it.

3. Ensure proper cable connections to the drive. The default setting for the middleribbon-cable connector is slave. The default setting for the end connector is master.

4. Configure the BIOS to recognize the drive.

Standard Connector Transfer Rate

UDMA/33 or

ATA/33

40-conductor, 40-pinconnector cable

33MBps

UDMA/66 or

ATA/66


66MBps

UDMA/100 or

ATA/100


100MBps

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SCSI (33)

SCSI Standard Pin Number Bus Size Transfer Rate

SCSI-125 or 50 8-bit 5MBps

Fast SCSI 50 8-bit 10MBps

Ultra SCSI 50 8-bit 20MBps

Fast Wide SCSI 68 or 80 8-bit 20MBps

Ultra 2 SCSI 50 8-bit 40MBps

Wide Ultra SCSI 68 or 80 16-bit 40MBps

Wide Ultra 2 SCSI 68 or 80 16-bit 80MBps



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Peripheral Connectors (38, 42, 46)

1. PC Keyboard, 5-pin AT (DIN)2. PS/2, 6-Pin Mini-DIN3. USB


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4. RJ-11

5. RJ-45 Male Female

6. BNC Male

back to contents Female


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7. FireWire (IEEE 1394)

Laser Printing Steps (41, 42)

1. Cleaning (wiper blade wipes drum)

2. Erasing (residual charge on the drum is neutralized)

3. Conditioning (negative charge evenly applied to drum)

4. Writing (small negative charge applied to drum to leave marks)

5. Developing (toner exposed to drum, image forms in uncharged fields)

6. Transferring (paper is fed, image transfers to paper)

7. Fusing (rollers apply heat and pressure to fuse toner to paper)

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Modem Commands (44)

Beeps Meaning

ATStands for attention. It must be typed in before any command.Alone, the command is used to check that a modem is turned on.The modem should respond with OK.

A (ATA) Answer

D (ATD) Dial

DT (ATDT) Dial with dial tone dialing

TP (ATTP) Dial with pulse dialing

H (ATH) Hang up


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Z (ATZ) Reset

DL (ATDL) Dial the last number dialed

H (ATH) Used to hang up the modem

I (ATI) Used to get information (e.g., ATI4 for the current modem settings).

MO (ATM0) Turn speaker off

M1 (ATM1) Turn speaker on

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Parallel Versus Serial (38, 42, 46)

Parallel Serial

AsynchronousSynchronous

synchronous (uses a clockthat tells the receivingdevice when the sendingdevice is done transmitting)

asynchronous (a start andstop bit is generated at thebeginning and end of thetransmission)

Data Transfereight bits at a time (onebyte)

one bit at a time

Types of Devices printer, scanner, faxkeyboard, modem, mouse,(sometimes printers,especially label printers)

Types of Connector(s) DB-25 (male)DB-9 COM (female), DB-25Serial (female)

Maximum Cable Length 15 feet (4.6 meters) 50 feet (15.2 meters)

Parallel Port 9-Pin Serial Port

Parallel ports attach to male connectors.There are no pins on the port.

Both 25-pin and 9-pin serial ports attach tofemale connectors. The ports have pins.


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NICs (47)

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Important Acronyms and Terms by Lesson

Input Device (1)Output Device (1)Peripheral Device (1)Short Circuit (4)Slimline (6, 13)ATX (6, 13, 16)AT (6, 13, 16)Baby AT (6, 13, 16)Form Factor (6, 14, 16)Power Supply Fan (6)Expansion Card (6)Booting (7)

EMI (8, 9)RFI (8, 9)Grounding (9)Power Surge (9)Power Spike (9)Power Sag (9)Brownout (9)Blackout (9)

ESD (9, 13)Digital Multimeter (11)Surge Suppressor (11)UPS (11)Antistatic Mat (13)Antistatic Bag (13)Grounding Wrist Strap (13)NLX (13, 16)Desktop (13)Tower (13)LED (13)Chipset (16)

Expansion Slot (16)External I/O Ports (16)RAM Socket (16)Power Supply Socket (16)Internal Buses (16)CMOS (16, 17)BIOS (17, 18, 51)


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Dip Switches and Jumpers (16, 17, 18,23)EEPROM, Flash ROM (18, 47)CPU Cache Memory (21)AMD Athlon CPU (22)Motorola CPUs (22)CPU Multiplier (23)Virtual Memory (26)

ROM (26)CD-R (29)CD-RW (29)Head (31)Platter (31)Cylinder (31)Track (31)Sector (31)Cluster (31)Read/Write Head (31)Master / Slave (32)

UDMA/66 (32)IDE (32, 33)SCSI (33)Fault Tolerance (33)RAID (33)Video Adapters (36)Video BIOS (36)VGA (36)SVGA (36, 37)CRT (37)Monitor Port (37)

LCD (37)Refresh Rate (37)Resolution (37)Bandwidth (37)Mouse Maintenance (38)Serial Connector / Port (38, 42, 46)Joystick Port (38)

USB (38, 42, 46)Sound Cards (39)Dot Matrix Printer (41, 42)Inkjet Printer (41, 42)Laser Printer (41, 42)Photosensitive Drum (41, 42)Toner (41, 42)Paper Jam (42)

Parallel Port (42, 46)PCMCIA Slot (43)PC Card (43)Modems (44)Handshake (44)Full-Duplex (44)Half-Duplex (44)Loopback Adapter (46)Crossover Cable (46)EPROM (47)Routers (47)

Bridges (47)Gateways (47)Repeaters (47)Hubs (47)UTP (47)STP (47)Topology (48)Bus (48)Ring (48)Star (48)Mesh (48)

Protocol (48)TCP/IP (48)Peer-to-Peer (48)Client / Server (48)Flashing the BIOS (49)back to contents

Definitions and Details

CMOS: The CMOS chip contains the BIOS. The chip keeps track of the amount ofmemory, types of drives and video cards installed in a computer. It also tracks the dateand the time. A small battery prevents CMOS settings from being lost when thecomputer is shut off.

BIOS: The BIOS version ID can be found during boot up or on one of the BIOSsetup screens. If a computer will not boot up, make sure that the proper boot order isset in the BIOS. For example, if you want the PC to boot off of the floppy drive first,primary hard-drive second, and CD-ROM third, set the boot order to A, C, CD-ROM.


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CPU Cache Memory:Cache memory (L1 or L2) is a very high-speed block of SRAMthat interacts between the CPU and system RAM.

AMD Athlon CPU:AMDs 5th generation CPU was called the K5. The sixth and seventhgenerations were called the K6 and K7, respectively. AMDs next generation CPUscode will be called the K8. Since the K8 CPU is not yet available, it may not beconsidered a valid CPU name on certification exams.

Motorola CPUs:The 68040 (1990) and PowerPC G4 (1999) were made for Applecomputers.

CPU Multiplier: If a CPU is running at the incorrect speed (e.g., a Pentium II 500MHzCPU running at 400MHz), check the multiplier setting. This is usually done through theBIOS and sometimes by setting jumpers on the motherboard.

Read/Write Head:A four-platter hard drive with double-sided platters has eightread/write heads.

Master / Slave: Unless manually specified in the BIOS, the master IDE drive defaults todrive (C:) and the slave defaults to drive (D:).

UDMA/66:Also known as ATA/66, UDMA/66 is part of the ATA/ATAPI-5 standard. TheIDE ribbon cable looks just like UDMA/33 but has twice as many wires (80 of them).There are still 40 pins on the end.

IDE: Most common for home PC users because it is cheaper and easier to install thanSCSI. IDE controllers can only support two hard drives.

SCSI:Multiple devices can be accessed simultaneously, and up to 7 or 15 peripherals

(depending on the SCSI standard) can be connected per SCSI controller.

Video Adapters: The most common types of video memory found in modern video cardsare SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic RAM). SGRAM (Synchronous Graphics RAM) andVRAM (Video RAM). Better quality video cards may feature DDR (Double-Data Rate)SDRAM, DDR SGRAM and cached DRAM or 3D RAM.

SVGA: Although SVGA is not an official standard, the term SVGA is used to refer to aresolution of 800 x 600. VGA refers to a resolution of 640 x 480.

Monitor Port: Monitor ports can be identified by their three rows of five holes.

DB-15 (Data Bus 15-pin) male connectors plug into monitor ports.

Mouse Maintenance:If a mouse is starting to stop and stick, before checking the driver,try cleaning the mouse ball and rollers. When troubleshooting, always try the simplestsolution first.

Serial Connector / Port: A serial connection is typically 9-pin or 25-pin. Power off beforeconnecting a serial-port mouse to a computer. Damage can occur if the mouse isconnected while the system is running.


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Joystick Port:Unlike monitor ports, joystick ports have only two rows of holes.Monitor and joystick ports both have a total of 15 pins.

USB: USB 2.0 is currently the fastest external expansion port available for PCs. USB2.0 supports 480Mbps transfers. The first USB standard supports 12Mbps transfers.USB mice support hot plugging, so shutdown is not necessary.

Sound Cards:Modern sound cards generally have the following ports: speaker (green),microphone (pink or red) and line-in (blue). They also have a joystick port. Some have arear-speaker port (black) and digital port (yellow).

Laser Printer: The ozone filter must be kept clean. You can vacuum it or use canned air.Eventually the ozone filter will have to be replaced. Never vacuum the photosensitivedrum.

Modems: Most modems connect to computers through 25-pin serial cables. Pin 20 isused for the DTR (Data Terminal Ready) signal and pin 6 for the DSR (Data Set Ready)signal. If a modem does not dial out, check the cabling. Next, check its configuration.

For example, the modem may be set to pulse dial (an old-fashioned dialing method)rather than tone dial.

Parallel Port: The 25-pin parallel port looks identical to a SCSI-1 port. There are severalparallel port standards, including, Standard Parallel Port (SPP), Bi-Directional,Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) and Enhanced Capabilities Port (ECP).

Crossover Cable:Used to directly connect two like devices, such as, two computers ortwo hubs. Crossover cables look just like straight-through cables (network cables)except the wires inside are reversed on one end.back to contents

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