CSC231 PC Demolition Lab 2014
--D. Thiebaut (talk) 19:37, 6 October 2014 (EDT)
This lab requires you to write a report. The report is due 10/21/14 at 11:55 p.m. The report has to be a Wiki page, which should be accessible from here.
You will get 10 additional points if you end the lab with all the parts put back in the enclosure, and the enclosure closed tightly!
Setup
- Create a team of 2 or 3 people.
- Take one of the old PCs in FH343, and bring it to FH342. Only take the PCs indicated to you as "Old PCs".
- Once the PC is in FH342, take it apart.
- Take pictures of all the parts you find. You will later create a Wiki page documenting your experience. This wiki will have photos and paragraph describing the parts you find.
- You need to have photo and a description for the following items:
- the motherboard
- the hard disk (which you may want to take apart).
- the motherboard
- the RAM
- the crystal giving its frequency to the processor
- the processor
- the cooling system for the processor
- The CD-Rom drive
- The power-supply
- The cabling system.
Photos
- Take pictures of all the computer parts you find, discover, remove, take-apart!
- Note that your camera may take pictures that are rotated left or right (or upside down). There are several utilities, on the Web or on your laptop, that can be used to rotate them the right way before inclusion in your report.
Assignment
- Your assignment is to
- take the PC apart, and if possible take some of the parts apart
- take notes of the part numbers, and or size of the various elements
- take pictures of the different parts that are important elements of a computer
- recognize by the name the different parts.
- write a wiki containing your lab report.
Questions
Include the answers to these questions in your report.
- Question 1
- What is the make and model number of the computer you are taking apart?
- Question 2
- What are the parts visible when you remove the cover?
- Question 3
- Where is the processor? What brand and model number is it? Remove it from the motherboard!
- Question 4
- Where is the RAM (Random Access Memory)? How much RAM is in the PC you're taking apart? What company makes it?
- Question 5
- Where is the CD/DVD player/burner? Is it a CD or DVD drive?
- Question 6
- Where is the power supply? How many watts of power can it output?
- Question 7
- What are all the cables for?
- Question 8
- Where is the hard disk? How many Gigabytes of data does it hold?
- Optional Question 9
- What is inside the hard disk?
- Question 10
- Where is the motherboard? What are the lines you see on the board?
- Question 11
- On the motherboard is a crystal. Where is it? What is it for?
- Question 12
- You may find a small battery on the motherboard. What is it for?
Lab Report
- Create a wiki page linked to your name. The main URL for the student wiki page is http://cs.smith.edu/classwiki/index.php/CSC231_Page_(2014)
- Your wiki should have your first name (you do not need to add your last name if you prefer not to have it on a page accessible on the World Wide Web).
- The class number (CSC231)
- Today's date
- A paragraph describing the goals for the lab, and including a description of the type of computer you took apart (Dell PC). Make sure you indicate the model number.
- A list of all the parts that were identified and/or removed. Each item should have a picture, and a paragraph (up to 5 lines) describing its function in a computer.
- Make sure you identify the main players for our class this semester: the processor and the memory! Because these are important, feel free to describe them more at length. In particular, figure out how to get the model number for the processor by removing the thermal paste the cover the processor.
- PLEASE: whenever you create a new page, or upload a new picture not already in the wiki, please prefix it with "CSC231_xxx" where xxx are your initials or a unique Id of yours. The reason is that if somebody uploads a photo and calls it processor.jpg and somebody decides to upload another photo and calls it with the same name, the second photo will "overwrite" the first one in all pages.
- Feel free to format the wiki page with more sophisticated features (documented in the tutorials indicated below).
- Put this mediawiki tag at the bottom of your wiki page:
[[Category:CSC231]]
. This way your page will appear in the CSC231 category page. It's an easy way to find pages related to a common subject.
Available resources
- All Web/Internet resources are fine, except wiki pages from other students in the class!
- The following pages maintained by MediaWiki cover many formatting features: