A with other machines ,they are only unapproachable by those inexperienced with them.an automobile mechanic may reel at the sight of a sewing of machine .the seamstress or tailor may throw up his hands at the thought of tuning his car.working on the computer is no different in fact today's personal computer is purposely designed to be easy to take apart and put back together,to change and modify,and is generally in vincible except at the hands of the foolish or purposely destructive ,as machines go ,the personal computer is sturdy and trouble free .changing a card in a computer is safer and more certain of success than fixing a simple home appliance such as a toaster.
The mystique surrounding the computer probably has its roots in several troubling aspects of the machine ,first and foremost,the computer is a thinking machine and that one word implies all sorts of preposterous nonsense.the thinking machine could be a devious machine hatching plots against you as it sits on your desk thinking of evil deeds that will cause you endless frustration .Well a thinking machine has a brain therefore opening it and working inside is brain surgery and the electronic patient is likely as the human to suffer irreversible damage at the hands of an unskilled operator.A thinking machine must work the same unfathomable way as the human mind some thing so complicated that in thousands of years of attempts by the best geniuses ,no one has satisfactorily explained it.but computers didn't thinks at least no in the same way you do or Albert Einstein did.the computer has no emotions or motivations.The impulses traveling through it are no odd mixture of chemicals and elect impulses traveling though it are no odd mixture of chemicals and electrical activity of activation and repression.the computer deals in simple pulses of electricity,
well understood and carefully controlled.The intimate workings of the computer are probably better understood than the seemingly simple flame inhabiting the intertnal combustion engine inside your car.nothing mysterious lurks inside the thinking machine called the computer.
Computers are considered fearsome because they are based on electrical circuits .Electricity can be dangerous as the ashes of anyone struck by lightning will attest .but inside in the computer the danger is low,at its worst it measures twelve volts ,which makes the inside of a computer as safe as playing with an electronic train .Nothing that's readily accessible inside the computer will shock you,straighten your hair,or shorten your life.the personal computer is designed that way its designed for tinkering,adding in accesories and taking them out.
computers are thought delicate because they are built from supposedly delicate electronic circuits ,the same ones that warn about holding a cold water pipe before touching them the same ones costing 500$ each,in fact the one variety of electronic component that is particularly delicate requires extreme protection only when its not installed where it belongs .pulses of static electricity do the damage ,but circuitry in which the component is installed naturally keeps the static under control.certainly a bolt of lightning or a good spark of static can still do harm but the risk of either can be minimized simply.in most situations and work places you should have little fear of damaging the circuits in sied your computer.
Most people didn't want to deal with the insides of their computers ,because the machines are complex and confusing.in truth they are and they are not .it all depends on how you look at them watching a movie on videotape is hardly a mental challenge but understanding the whirring heads inside the machine and how the image is synchronized and the hi fi sound is recorded is something that will spin your brain for hours.similarly changing a board or adding a dick drive to a computer is simple understanding the Boolean logic controlling the digital gates on the disk drive is perhaps more difficult.
Most of what you may want to do with your computer requires no arcane knowledge of electronics nor will you need great technical or mechanical skill enhancing a computer is a matter of fitting connectors together and at most operating a screwdriver almost anyone can do it and that includes you.
Although you do not need sill or an in depth knowledge of computer of data processing theory you do need to know what you want to accomplish and what you can accomplish the how and why of working with expanding even building a personal computer system and that's the purpose of this book its a dual purpose book ,the text is written to give you an overview of what makes up a computer system ,it will give you enough grounding in how the machine works so you can understand what are doing if you want to dig in and expand or upgrade your system at the same time the charts and tables will provide you with the reference materials you need to put your new knowledge to work as a whole this book will help you install setup and take advantage of you computer its peripherals and all their power .
The computer is nothing ot fear and it ned not be a mystery it is a machine and straightit forward one at that..
