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 We will start on the upper right corner. The devices here are the CD drives. There is usually one, sometimes two. The drives are made to easily slide in and out, power cords attach with a plug. If there are two, they are hooked together with a cord from the mother board and a power cord. Below the CD drives you will see the hard drive. This is where all the files and programs on the computer are stored. Sometimes there may be two hard drives, one the master and the other a slave. The master hard drive contains the operating system of the computer, the other being used as a storage drive, sort of like a huge file cabinet. These are also hooked together both with a power cord and another one from the mother board. Below the hard drive on older computers is the A drive. This is drive which uses the old floppy disc. Most of the newer computers don't have one. What you find below that will vary somewhat from computer to computer. On the computer shown, the area is open, with just a plug for a couple of UPC cables. On the upper left at the top of the inside of the computer you will find the power supply. This device has its own cooling fan, the inlet you will see on the back of the computer. It supplies electric power to the computer. Below the power supply is the cooling fan. This also has an inlet on the back of the computer. This blows air into the interior of the computer, cooling the components and the hard drives. Below the power supply is the ports for the various plug and play devices used in a computer like a modem, sound cards and other neat stuff. On this particular picture of the inside of a computer, there are no devices installed, so you can see the mother board. The motherboard acts as a sort of "Grand Central Station" for the computer. Everything that makes the computer work is either on it, or plugs into it. So that's it. That is the inside of a computer. Next we will dissect the various parts and explore what they do. |