Peter Norton's inside the PC

With over 1 million copies in print, Peter Norton's Inside the PC, Seventh Edition addresses the needs of all users- novices to business professionals to power-users. Fully rewritten with new highly informative illustrations, this edition takes you far beyond a mere recounting of a PC's insides. Chapters on understanding bits, nybbles, and bytes, clarify the basics. Other chapters detail key enabling technologies and hot new developments, including IDE, ATAPI, SCSI, Firewire, and USB for peripheral connectivity. With Norton, you'll: understand what's inside your PC and why it's needed; find out how people are able to make PCs do the things they do; see what's special about mobile PCs; get an insider's view of how PCs were created; learn how the Internet, Java, and related developments are changing what you expect from your PC; understand the special hardware needs for intense multimedia experiences; and witness the birth of the "conversational" PC that understands and responds to you.

Part I The Big Picture	p. 1
1 The View from Afar	p. 3
Don't Blink	p. 4
The Plague: Jargon	p. 5
Do the Time Warp, Again	p. 6
The Bottom Line: What You Must Know and Why	p. 8
A Method and Plan for Our Journey	p. 10
2 How (Almost) Any Computer Works	p. 13
The Logical Parts of Any Computer	p. 13
What Makes a Computer More than a Calculator?	p. 24
Summary	p. 27
3 Understanding Bits, Nybbles, and Bytes	p. 29
What Is Information? How Much Room Does It Takes Up?	p. 29
Bits, Bytes, Nybbles, and Words	p. 39
Representing Numbers and Strings of Characters	p. 42
Symbols and Codes	p. 49
What Is Data and How Is It Processed?	p. 58
Part II A First Look Inside Your PC	p. 59
4 understanding Your PC's Parts	p. 61
A PC as a Chamber Orchestra	p. 61
The Three Main Pieces	p. 62
Controlling Chaos by Leaving the Legacy Behind	p. 86
What Parts Are Where in Your PC; Some Things to Think About and Try	p. 94
Summary IBM's Grand Innovation/IBM's Great Folly	p. 94
5 How to Get Your PC to Understand You	p. 95
What Language Does Your PC Understand?	p. 95
Where Are Instructions and Data Kept?	p. 98
How Mere Humans Can Manage All This	p. 105
6 Enhancing Your Understanding by Exploring and Tinkering	p. 107
Why Is This Valuable? And, Is It Dangerous?	p. 107
Windows 98's Best Hidden Secret	p. 111
An Introduction to DEBUG	p. 113
Using the Norton Disk Editor	p. 116
Some More Things to Think About and Try	p. 118
Summary	p. 121
Part III The Standalone PC	p. 123
7 Understanding PC Processors	p. 125
A Sea of Change in PC CPUs	p. 126
Intel, IBM, and You	p. 128
What If It Isn't Intel Inside?	p. 143
It's an Increasingly RISC-y Business	p. 150
Are More Brains Better than One?	p. 152
Other Processors in Your PC	p. 152
Major and Minor Improvements	p. 153
When to Upgrade Your PC	p. 154
8 How Your PC "Thinks"	p. 157
What Is a Computer Architecture?	p. 157
Details of the x86 CPU's Architecture	p. 158
The Architecture That Goes Around the CPU	p. 179
Interrupts: The Driving Force	p. 188
What Is a DMA Channel?	p. 194
Keeping Up with the Clock	p. 196
How Your PC Wakes Up and Prepares Itself for Work	p. 200
Some Things to Think About and Try	p. 205
9 You Can Never Have Too Much Closet (or Data Storage) Space	p. 207
Traditional PC Disk Drives	p. 207
Understanding the DOS Perspective (and Why This Still Matters)	p. 212
Learning About File Formats	p. 244
Summary	p. 249
10 Digging Deeper Into Disks	p. 251
How Hard Disks Are Different	p. 251
Managing Multiple PC Disk Drives	p. 256
Variationis on the Theme of PC Storage	p. 262
How DOS and Windows See Optical Discs--The Origin and Value of ISO9660 and UDF	p. 281
Disk Utilities	p. 284
Some Things to Think About and Try	p. 290
11 Giving Your CPU Enough Elbow Room--PC Memory	p. 293
Understanding PC Memory	p. 293
Not All Memory Is Equal	p. 315
Your PC's Memory Needs to Be Managed	p. 321
Understanding Windows Memory Use	p. 331
So, How Much RAM Do I Need, Really?	p. 334
Some Things to Think About and Try	p. 335
12 Getting Your PC's Attention: Input Devices	p. 337
The Keyboard Is "Key"	p. 338
The Point Is Pointing (Mousing Around)	p. 348
Some Other PC Input Devices	p. 360
The "Dark Side" of PC Input	p. 369
Summary	p. 371
13 Seeing the Results: PC DIsplays	p. 373
It's Just No Good If You Can't Get the Information Out	p. 373
Getting the Colors (Almost) Right	p. 391
How to Talk to a Video Display	p. 392
Understanding Display Technologies	p. 393
Running the Display System Backward	p. 401
Summary	p. 404
14 Getting It All Down on Paper; Printers	p. 405
The Purpose and Power of PC Printers	p. 405
Printing Technologies--An Overview	p. 405
Impact Printers for PCs	p. 410
Nonimpact Printers for PCs	p. 413
Getting the Color (Almost) Right	p. 418
Summary	p. 421
15 Understanding Standard PC Input and Output	p. 423
Some Special-Purpose I/O Interfaces	p. 423
Talking Through a Tiny Pipe: Serial Ports	p. 424
The Keyboard Interface	p. 434
Bus Mice Versus Serial Mice Versus USB Mice	p. 436
Combining the Keyboard and a Pointing Device	p. 438
The Faster Output Path That Can Work Both Ways	p. 438
Serial and Parallel Port Addresses and Their Names	p. 443
Some Other Ways to Get More Than the Allowed Number of Serial (or Parallel) Ports	p. 444
The Video Output Port	p. 446
Summary	p. 448
16 Faster Ways to Get Information Into or Out of Your PC	p. 449
The Most General I/O Interfaces: The PC Input/Output Bus(es)	p. 449
The Original (ISA) PC I/O Bus	p. 450
Growing Up ISA to Meet Modern PC I/O Needs	p. 452
ISA Grows Up--The Origin of IDE, EIDE, ATA, ATAPI, and More	p. 453
The PCI Bus	p. 460
The Really Good Bus with the Really Bad Name (SCSI)	p. 471
The Future of PC-to-Peripheral	p. 483
The Wonderful New High-Speed Serial Buses (USB and IEEE 1394)	p. 485
There Will Be More I/O Bus Standards	p. 488
17 Understanding PC Operating Systems	p. 491
What Is an Operating System and Why Do I Need One?	p. 492
Microsoft Windows Takes Over	p. 499
Windows 9x Internal Details and Boot Process	p. 506
Understanding Your Choices for Your PC's Operating System	p. 511
Summary	p. 515
Part IV PC Programs: From Machine Language Bytes to Human Speech	p. 517
18 Understanding How Humans Instruct PCs	p. 519
Harnessing the PC's Power to Help Mere Humans	p. 519
Dividing Up the Work	p. 531
How Not to Keep On Reinventing the Wheel	p. 532
Helping Ordinary People "Program" Their PCs Easily	p. 536
Summary	p. 537
19 Some PCs Can Understand Speech and Talk to Us	p. 539
Making Conversational PCs: Breaking Down the Overall Job	p. 540
Making PCs Speak	p. 541
Teaching PCs to Listen and Understand	p. 543
Understanding What You Have Heard	p. 547
Generating Useful and Relevant Responses	p. 547
How Far Along Are We Now?	p. 548
What's Next?	p. 552
Part V Splendiferous Multimedia PCs	p. 553
20 How to "Wow" a Human	p. 555
What Was a Multimedia PC?	p. 555
Multimedia Today and Tomorrow	p. 557
Direct Hardware Access	p. 580
Will Your PCs RUn Your Radio, Wash Your Clothes, and Program Your VCR?	p. 589
The Convergence of PCs, Telephones, and Television Is Here--At Last!	p. 590
21 Immersive PC Experiences	p. 593
Immersive Technologies	p. 594
Immersive Applications	p. 603
No Longer Just for Gamers	p. 606
Part VI PCs Are Frequent Flyers, Too	p. 609
22 Why Mobile PCs Must Be Different	p. 611
From Luggables to Laptops and Beyond	p. 611
Lessons to Be Learned from Portable PCs	p. 620
Power Is Previous on the Road	p. 622
The Ecologically Sensitive PC	p. 627
Mobile PCs at Home and in the Office	p. 633
Summary	p. 635
Part VII The Connected PC	p. 637
23 The PC Reaches Out, Part One: Modems and More	p. 639
A Really Short Stretch	p. 639
Four Realms of PC COnnectivity	p. 641
Permanent and Transient Connections	p. 641
Modems and More	p. 643
Summary	p. 662
24 The PC Reaches Out, Part Two: Through the NIC Node	p. 663
The NIC Node	p. 663
The NIC Node Needs a NOS	p. 676
Other Software for the Connected PC	p. 682
Summary	p. 687
25 PCs That Think They're Mainframes: Multiprocessor PCs and Other Serves	p. 689
Analyzing the Need	p. 689
What's Hard About Multiprocessor PCs?	p. 703
Summary	p. 705
Part VIII PCs, the Internet, the FUture, and You	p. 707
26 You Can Touch the World, and It May Touch You, Too!	p. 709
What Is the Internet, and How Does It Work?	p. 709
A Lot More Than Just Data Is Out There	p. 717
Be Careful: It Can Be a Dangerous World Out There	p. 733
Summary	p. 734
27 Looking Back and Looking Ahead	p. 735
Learning from the Past and Predicting the Future	p. 735
Our Tour Is Over But the Journey Is Not	p. 738
How the Story Comes Out Depends, in Part, on You	p. 738
Remember, It's Your Personal Computer; You Are in Charge	p. 739
Glossary	p. 741
Index	p. 771

Available:*

On Order

Summary

Summary

Table of Contents