Chapter 13 - DVD drives

Abstract

This chapter highlights that a personal computer is a general purpose microprocessor based system that carries out a variety of functions and operations, including data manipulation, word processing, and reading and recording of optical storage devices such as CD ROMs and DVD disks. A basic personal computer consists of a system box and a number of peripheral devices, such as a keyboard and a mouse. The system box has two elements: hardware and software. The hardware elements include the power supply, the motherboard, the floppy and hard disk drives, and various ports such as parallel and serial ports and USB (universal serial bus) ports. The software consists of the various programs and routines that are required by the microprocessor and other support chips to function. The software may be in the form of a programmed ROM or EPROM chip, or it may be stored on a floppy disk, a hard disk or CD/DVD disks. Windows supports a number of utilities that provide information about the system, including size of memory, type of processor, conflicts, and installed drivers to assist in diagnostics and faultfinding. System information is a very useful utility that provides detailed information regarding the operating system and hardware components of the computer.