Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

PETER COOK and SCOTT MANNING are the Compududes(r), whose popular radio show is heard on National Public Radio. The 'Dudes have also written about computers for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Knight-Ridder Wire Services, and they have appeared on the Discovery Channel's Home Matters and Fox Network News.

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Why Doesn't my Floppy Disk Flop? And Other Kids' Computer Questions Answered by the Compududes.

For the best answers, coolest Web sites, and excellent cyber-activities, pick up Why Doesn't My Floppy Disk Flop? This lively, informative guide provides the answers to dozens of questions that you (and your parents!) really want to know. Combining their popular brand of humor with cartoon illustrations, sidebars, and tons of advice, the Compududes make all the learning seem like play. From the ins and outs of hardware and software to the best ways to take advantage of the Internet to the exciting future of computing, the answers and explanations in Why Doesn't My Floppy Disk Flop? are guaranteed to plug you in, log you on, and turn you into a computer whiz in no time!

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Why Doesn't my Floppy Disk Flop? And Other Kids' Computer Questions Answered by the Compududes.

For the best answers, coolest Web sites, and excellent cyber-activities, pick up Why Doesn't My Floppy Disk Flop? This lively, informative guide provides the answers to dozens of questions that you (and your parents!) really want to know. Combining their popular brand of humor with cartoon illustrations, sidebars, and tons of advice, the Compududes make all the learning seem like play. From the ins and outs of hardware and software to the best ways to take advantage of the Internet to the exciting future of computing, the answers and explanations in Why Doesn't My Floppy Disk Flop? are guaranteed to plug you in, log you on, and turn you into a computer whiz in no time!

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Why Doesn't My Floppy Disk Flop?

Jossey-Bass

Contents

Welcome to Our Book..............................................1Introduction: Highlights of Computer History.....................31. Hardware......................................................92. Software......................................................313. The Internet..................................................454. Good Computer Habits..........................................695. The Computer Future...........................................81Glossary.........................................................85Bibliography.....................................................88Index............................................................89

Chapter One

Everyone has a general idea of what a computer is, but not many really know what's going on inside that beige box on the desk. But don't worry, it's not as complicated as you may think.

From the largest computer that NASA uses to keep the space shuttle flying to the smallest computer chip inside your microwave oven, all computers do the same three basic things. First, they get information from the outside world. For the space shuttle, that information includes how fast it is going, how high it is, and so on. For the microwave oven, the information might relate to the kind of food you are putting in it. Next, computers do something with that information, like decide how much fuel to burn to move the shuttle, or how long to cook your popcorn. Once that is decided, they send out signals to make the engines burn or the microwaves bounce around in the oven.

The Basics

What are hardware and software?

* Hardware refers to all of the parts of the computer, from the computer box to the computer monitor to the printer. Software refers to all of the programs that go into your computer.

What are the basic parts of a computer?

* The monitor is the big screen that you look at. The computer box is what holds its guts-all the chips, circuit boards, and so on. The central processing unit (CPU), the chip that carries the basic instructions about how the computer works, is in this box, so people sometimes refer to the box as the CPU even though it contains much more than just the CPU. The box also includes one or more slots, or disk drives. The keyboard is what you use to type words and commands. The mouse is the little box with a rolling ball inside that you use to move the cursor around the screen.

What is a motherboard?

* If you look inside a computer, you will see a huge circuit board that fills one side of the case. Circuit boards, computer chips, and wires are all connected together on the motherboard, or the main circuit board, of the computer. The motherboard (there isn't a fatherboard) is where you find the basic circuits like the central processing unit and RAM memory chips. The parts like the sound card, the floppy disk drive, and the CD-ROM player are all connected and controlled by the motherboard.

What is a computer chip?

* A computer chip is a tiny group of millions of electronic components and circuits in your computer that make it work. These days computer chips are made of silicon and metals like tin, gold, and copper.

What's the point of making things in a computer so incredibly tiny?

* There are two reasons why circuits in computers are so tiny. First, if the parts were larger, and they could be, your desktop computer would be the size of your house and you couldn't have laptops or palmtops. The second reason is that the smaller you make computers, the faster they can go. By reducing the length of the wires and the distance between computer chips you actually speed up the computer.

Can you make a computer so small it can fit in your brain?

* Not yet, but in April 1998 two doctors from Emory University, Dr. Bakay and Dr. Kennedy, connected a human brain to an electronic device that amplifies brain signals. The signals are transmitted from an antenna connected to the device to a laptop computer. The patient, who is completely paralyzed, is able to move the computer cursor around a screen and communicate with the doctors.

What does "Intel Inside" mean?

* Intel is a company that makes computer chips for most of the computers sold in the last twenty years. The Pentium and the Pentium II are very powerful chips that contain your central processing unit or CPU.

Bits and Bytes

What's a computer bit?

* A computer bit is the smallest unit of data handled by a computer. It represents either 0 or 1. This is known as a binary number system. A computer actually works by using on and off switches. If a switch is off, it means 0; if it's on, it means 1. There are millions of microscopic switches within a computer's microchips.

How many bits does a computer use at once?

* Your computer works in 8-bit chunks called bytes. It also works with 16 bits at a time (called a word) or 32 bits at a time (called a long word). The number of bits that a computer works with depends on what you ask it to do. If you are working with letters, your computer is moving bytes at a time, because one byte can store one character (one letter, or space, or punctuation mark). If you are painting with an art program, your computer will usually work with long words, because 32 bits is enough data to record all of the colors that you can see.

Memory

What is memory?

* Memory in a computer is a lot like an address book that the computer uses to keep track of numbers and other information. For a program to run, the computer must load it into memory; then it starts following the instructions one at a time. If the program tells the computer to add two numbers and then multiply that answer by another number, the computer will first do the addition and then store the answer in memory and use it to multiply.

Computer memory is organized as a bunch of addresses, one per byte. The computer can read or write to any address in memory without going through every address before and after it. This is called random access.

What is the difference between RAM and ROM?

* The most important type of memory is usually called random access memory, or RAM. The name random access means that you can get to any storage location that you want in any order. Actually all computer memory is random access. The important thing about data stored in RAM is that it will hang around only while the power is on. If you turn the power off without saving your work somewhere else, you will lose any data that you have been working on.

The other type of memory that you will find in a computer is called read-only memory, or ROM. Like RAM, ROM is random access, but unlike RAM, anything stored in ROM is going to be stored in the computer chip forever. In addition, read-only means that you cannot change the data that is stored in ROM; you can only use it. The instructions that tell the computer how to start up and read the hard drive are stored in ROM.

How much memory do I really need?

* The amount of memory that you have in your computer is very important....