Temple College
  Main>Microcomputer System Software >Test 1 Review

Test 1 Review

Test 1 Review © R. Craig Collins, 2005

Chapter 1
Background on various OS's
Command Line	Graphical User Interface
Unix	1970s	Alto
Apple		Mac OS 6-9
CP/M		OS/2
DOS		Windows
Linux (UNIX)	Mac OSX (UNIX)

What an OS manages
Hardware		Software		  Users			Files
Input-process-output	Registry-Initialization	    Interface		copy, move, rename, delete, etc
	|						Command Line
    CPU Memory						GUI
            ROM						 Menu
       	     BIOS 					 Icon
            RAM
The basic portion of the OS that deals with hardware is the kernel, the portion dealing with interface is the shell
Differences between DOS and Windows
DOS		Windows
16 bit		32 bit
Real mode	Protected Mode
8.3 filenames	255 character filenames
FAT	VFAT	FAT32	NTFS File systems
single thread	multi-threaded

Chapter 2
Hardware, connecting the CPU to devices
CPU, pulls info from CMOS, PnP BIOS, Device Drivers, or RAM
Types of CPUs
Pentium
Athlon
Motorola (Mac)

CPU connects to devices via bus to port or slot

Ports include standard devices
   Keyboard
   printer
   video
   USB
Slots are to connect non-standard devices
ISA 8-16 legacy devices
EISA 32 bit legacy devices
PCI local bus to hard disk
AGP local bus to video

Devices have info on them stored
   Driver
   IRQ (used by device to initiate contact with CPU)
   I/O Address (used by CPU to initiate contact with device, leads to memory address)
   DMA

Special case output, storage
RAM is primary memory, drives are secondary storage
Drives have physical and logical characteristics

Physical
IDE or SCSI connection to disk; disk structure:
   cylinders
   tracks
   sectors
	a cluster is the smallest about of data used by an OS, usually occupies more than one sector

Logical
   partitions to look like more than one disk, created by fdisk, then formatted
   subdivided logical heirarchy
	root directory branches out in tree form
		

Chapter 3
Boot up and Commands

BIOS to POST to Load OS to OS configuration
Power On Self Test detects hardware

BIOS checks MBR to determine disk structure, locates OSBR which contains directive to load IO.SYS, etc.

Once OS presence is loaded into memory, it is configured using autoexec.bat, etc.

Review commands listed below:
DIR	MKDIR	CD	RD	DELTREE
TYPE	RENAME	ATTRIB	DEL	UNDELETE
COPY	XCOPY	SYS
SCANREG	CHKDSK	SCANDISK
DEFRAG	FDISK	FORMAT	UNFORMAT
VER	SETVER
DEBUG	EDIT


© R. Craig Collins, 2005

We rate with RSACi. Last Updated Aug. 22, 2005