The Gazette 1988

DECEMBER 1988

GAZETTE

So you're thinking of buying a computer . . .

your monitor, either monochrome (black and white) or colour. O.K., so you come in t omo r r ow bright and early. Put the coffee on and read The Times. N ow i t 's computer time so you t h r ow the power sw i t ch on. The first thing that happens is the screen lights up and some data is displayed. This first piece of data is of no concern to you. The computer will run some internal diagnostics for a while and will then access the Hard Disk and then show the 'C' prompt on the screen. This means that your hard disk has booted successfully and it's name is C. At this point you will enter your program name, wh i ch you should already know, and Hey Presto, your computer springs into action. Your floppy drive, by the way, wou ld be referred to as 'A'. With your program displayed on the screen the options are yours. You will probably want to add data or retrieve and edit existing data. After all this trauma you might like to get a hard copy of some files or even send a letter. The PRINTER usually has t wo leads attached to it. One for the power, the other connects directly to the computer and your data is transmitted along this. You will probably have created some documents on your computer by now, so go to the print options and select print. Your printer springs into action and spits out your finished document. This was a very general des- cription of what your computer does and what some of the jargon means. I hope you will have found it of some benefit. Good luck for the technical future. COLM T. STAFFORD Managing Director E.R.S.

One of the most daunting tasks that faces people in business today is that of buying a computer system. What brand should you buy, has it got enough memory, is the hard disk big enough, is it fast enough, etc. These are questions t hat wou ld be asked prior to purchase by a person who knows their homework but what of the guy who does not? When the average person hears R AM or MEGABYTES, or HERCULES, usually they keep quiet and agree w i th whoever knows the b i g g e st wo r d. It is h owe v er important to note that a computer is quite a stupid device in its own right. It's you who will make the computer intelligent by feeding it every day w i th its food, i.e. data. DATA is anything that you need to store on your computer, e.g. names, addresses, phone no., etc. Your computer will store all these items nice and neatly on your hard disk, a devce we will come back to later. But before we go further, it should be stated that the most important item w i t h regard to a computer system is the software. SOFTWARE is t he p r og r am wh i ch will be loaded onto your computer. Some people think that all you do is buy your computer, t u r n it on and s t a rt t y p i n g. Unfortunately this is not the case as you will need a SOFTWARE PACKAGE t o store your data correctly in order for you to retrieve it properly. It is like a bridge across a d i v i de, w i t h o u t w h i c h commun i ca t i on cannot be made. Once the software is loaded you can start your data entry all of wh i ch will be stored on your hard disk. The HARD DISK is the device where bo th your programs, data, and maybe a f ew games will be

stored. This is fixed to the machine and cannot be handled by the owner. It usually comes in a 20 Megabytes size but can be larger. This term 'MEGABYTES' means millions, so you have 20 million bytes of storage space on your hard disk. The easy way to describe a BYTE is, that ever character would need one byte of space to store it. Thus 20 Megabytes would store 20 million letter " A " s. Easy, no!! You will also have what is called a FLOPPY DRIVE, where you will place floppy disks. The FLOPPY DISK can be handled by the owner but this must be done carefully. FLOPPY DRIVES can store a variety of amounts, from 3 6 0 , 0 00 bytes to 1.44 Mega- bytes of data. The floppy drive wo u l d be used to load your programs on to the hard disk. But most importantly they are used to make security copies of your highly confidential data stored on your hard disk. Some people are under the illusion that a hard disk is indestructable — a mistake that has been made by many a novice and even some veterans in the computer industry. I warn you now and don't say you were never told, "Do your backups". RAM does not mean to run somebody down. This is where your programs reside temporarily after loading t hem from the hard disk. When power is sw i t ched off you will lose everything that is in memo ry or RAM unless you have saved it to your hard disk. So don't think you can just sw i t ch your computer off when you feel like it. Exit your programs properly. Data, as you may have gathered by now, must be entered through the keyboard wh i ch is almost identical to a typewriter keyboard. All activity is displayed to you on

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