Title: PC Hardware Introduction

Prerequisites: Familiarity with PC use

Languages: None
Time: 2 hours
Schedule: Chapter 3
Requirements: An old PC, disconnected from mains power with the lid off
Slackware bootable CD for Linux installation
Access to Google

Summary:
This worksheet is a basic introduction to PC maintenance skills.

Learning Objectives:
To recognize and name the component parts inside a PC.
To be able to fit DRAM modules (DIMMs) correctly.
Plug in IDE hard disk units correctly.
Use a boot CD with ISO image to install Linux.

Commercial Relevance:
The popularity of the original IBM PC and all its subsequent clones, has meant that many more
ordinary computer users are now forced to be self-reliant and act as their own systems
administrator by carr ying out repairs, upgrades and software installations themselves both at
home and in the office. Having such skills and confidence is now a strong asset in the job
market. Nearly everybody is confronted by a reluctant PC at some time in their lives. Knowing
roughly how they work can make diagnosing them much easier, even if it only helps with the
inevitable telephone call to a service engineer.

What you do:

Select an old Viglen 200 MHz PC from the pile of discarded equipment. DO NOT PLUG IT
INTO THE MAINS, YET. Remove the single piece wrap-over lid. This may or may not involve
screwdriver work at the back.

Ensure that the mains power lead is not inserted, do not rely on simply switching off the
electricity at the wall socket. Before removing the lid of any electrical equipment it is sensible to
UNPLUG the POWER LEAD, PULL it OUT. Only then take the lid off.

A useful trick is to always note how things are arranged BEFORE you take them apart.
It makes reassembly so much easier!

Identify the following items:

Main ON/OFF push button on front panel, and the small recessed button under it which does a
soft system reset. You can use a biro point to operate it.

Power Supply Unit (PSU), metal box, 120x100x100mm, converts mains 240V
AC line voltage into 5V and 12V DC for use by the processor (Pentium) and
assor ted digital logic circuits on the PC motherboard.

Floppy disc drive, note the ribbon data cable and the separate power supply lines.

Hard disk drives, these will use the IDE interface which supports upto 2 drives on each ribbon
cable. There may be 2 IDE sockets on the motherboard, allowing 2 ribbon cables and so a
maximum of 4 drives. Distinguish IDE from floppy disk cable sockets. Note that it is common in
Windows to refer to the 4 drives, whether hard disk or CDROM, as C:, D:, E: and F:. In
Linux/Unix these are: /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, /dev/hdd.

1
CD-ROM drive, probably another IDE device. Try gently unplugging an IDE cable from the
motherboard, and reinserting it the correct way round.

Motherboard, supports and interconnects the electronic components such as the Pentium II
processor and memory. (AN430TX 1998, 66MHz bus, socket 7, 200 MHz Pentium)

Expansion Bus slots, useful to plug in expansion cards, such as modem, LAN interface or
graphics card.

CPU, the Pentium. This will be hidden under an aluminium heat sink and a small cooling fan.
The fan needs power and so will be plugged into either the motherboard or a power supply lead.

Main memory, dynamic RAM (DRAM), this will comprise one or more small cards, inser ted into
sockets mounted on the motherboard. These can be removed carefully for inspection. First
make sure you grab hold of the metal case to discharge any personal static charge. The DIMM
cards are secured by small lever clips at either end which have to be judiciously splayed apar t to
eject the DIMM card upwards. Try not to touch the connection tongues as there is still a danger
of static electricity from your body damaging the circuitry. But this danger is exaggerated, for the
most part, in damp, rainy Britain. Inspect the memory chips and note down the manufacturer
and part number. Count the number of chips on each DIMM. Later you will be using this
information to understand the main memory configuration. Remember to firmly replace the
DIMM in the same slot that you found it. There are location slots to ensure you place them the
correct way round. Finally, make sure the locking levers are aligned correctly

BIOS (ROM), a permanent memory which retains its contents even when the power is removed.
The chip is usually covered in a paper label and inserted into a socket, rather than soldered
onto the Motherboard. It is essential during boot-up when the main DRAM is empty and so
cannot do anything.

Level II cache memory (SRAM), for older Pentiums, this can be directly soldered onto the
Motherboard, and will appear as a 2 or 4 identical chips usually positioned close to the CPU
socket. More modern Pentiums have the LII cache inside the CPU package, and so not visible.

CMOS RAM battery, the real-time clock chip and the RAM which holds system parameters, are
supplied from a small on-board Lithium battery. How big is the associated CMOS RAM?

Cooler fan, the Pentium has a personal fan in addition to the fan that cools the power supply
unit. Intel now arranges for the new Pentiums to slow down if the processing load is light, to
save power and reduce heat output. There are also temperature sensors which turn the
processor off when the temperature rises too much.

2
 Mouse
USB socket
MODEM sockets
socket LAN Keyboard
Printer
socket socket
Connector

Slots for Sound I/O

I/O
Expansion Cards ATX Power
Connector

Hard Disk
IDE
VGA Connectors

Floppy disk
Connector

PCI Slots
Slots for
ChipSet ChipSet Memory
AGP Slot Modules
ISA Slot
Lithium
Batter y
+ Socket 462
BIOS

Cr ystal

Fig 3.2 CPU Fan

PC ATX Motherboard, Connector
showing the locations of
the CPU, memor y and I/O Pentium CPU
card sockets and Heatsink

Graphics, a VGA graphics chip may be installed directly onto the Motherboard, also requiring a
socket for the monitor connection cable, or remaining, as is traditional, on a separate graphics
expansion card, which allows easy upgrades to be installed. Remove the Graphics card by
unscrewing the single retaining screw and pulling the card upwards. If you drop the screw onto
the motherboard, or inside the PC, please remove it immediately. Note where possible, the
name of the manufacturer, the type of card and the number of the main chip. Carefully replace
the card, ver tically. Press it firmly into the AGP/PCI socket, but do not flex the motherboard with
too much force. Replace the single retaining screw.

Graphics card, this might be an ISA, PCI or AGP card which formats and displays data on the
monitor. Check the SVGA lead between the monitor and the PC. It plugs directly into a socket
on the edge of the graphics card. A new standard known as DVI (Digital Video Interface) may
eventually displace the old analogue SVGA, especially for LCD panels. Although basic graphics
facilities are now included on the motherboard, many users prefer the AGP extension socket

3
because it allows them to install a powerful grapics co-processor to speed up games software.

Network card, this will be a PCI card (plugging into a PCI socket).
Modern motherboards have this included as original equipment. The
transfer speed will be 10 Mbps or more recently, 100 Mbps.

Centronics printer port (LPT0, or for Linux /dev/lp1) this will be taken directly from the
Motherboard, or connected through short leads to the rear-panel sockets.

Serial modem ports (COM1/2, or for linux /dev/ttyS0/1) this will appear similar to the printer port,
but using a different size and style of D-type socket on the back panel.

Do not remove the fan, heat sink and CPU unless you are confident in replacing them. If you
do, identify the CPU and determine its number and manufacturer. Intel, AMD, IBM/Cyrix, and
IDT manufacture Pentium-type CPUs. Which CPU is employed? Use Google to discover the
information using the part number. Remember that static electricity can damage modern
electronic components, so ear th yourself out, by touching the metal chassis, before picking up a
Pentium.

What clock speed does the Pentium run at?

What type of CPU socket is used?

How much on-chip CPU (LI) cache is there?

You may have to refer to the Web or a book for this info.

Note down the part number from a memor y chip, and use Google to seek out the
manufacturer’s data sheet. How much memory is offered by each chip on a module?

How big is the maximum RAM which can be installed on the Motherboard, in Bytes?

How does the Pentium access main memory, byte by byte?

How wide is the PC data bus?

Check out the sockets on the rear of the chassis.

What are they each used for?

What data I/O ports are available to the user?

Which ports are serial and which are parallel?

What are the maximum data rate throughputs (bandwidth) for each of these ports?

What are the principal chips associated with each port?

4
Find the main system crystal on the Motherboard. It is a small silver can with two wires. What
speed is the system crystal running at?

How come the Pentium CPU runs faster than the system crystal?

Is there any way that you can run a Pentium rated at 500MHz any faster?
Check out the term "over clocking" on Google

Try the following WWW URLs for useful information about PC hardware and low level software:

http://www.pcguide.com
http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://www.mkdata.dk/click/
http://www.pcmech.com/index.cfm
http://www.tme-inc.com/html/ser vice/general
http://www.viglen.co.uk/viglen/suppor t

Now reassemble/replace everthing. Put the lid back in place.

Carefully insert the VGA plug, from a screen lead, into the graphics card socket.
Connect the power feed to the screen.

Carefully insert keyboard and mouse plugs into the two rear sockets.
(These can easily be damaged if oriented incorrectly)

Now plug in the mains feed and power up.

Quickly hold down the [F2] function key to force entry to the BIOS setup utility. If the system
continues into Boot manager, offering Windows or Linux, it is wrong, and you need to reboot and
try for the [F2] key once more. The password should be removed. Hit [RET] when challenged.

The blue BIOS SetupUtility menu should appear, offering:

Main - Advanced - Security - Power - Boot - Exit

Always read the help paragraphs,

Note the Pentium speed

Note the size of memor y

Is the time still correct? Never mind.

5
Under Main menu, note down what devices have been detected, and their storage capacity:

IDE Master,

IDE Slave,

Secondar y IDE Master,

Secondar y IDE Slave.

Now hit [ESC].

Insert a Slackware bootable CD into the drive and close the drawer.

Now change to the BIOS Boot menu, and check that the system will boot from the CDROM
device. Make [ATAPI CD-ROM Drive] the first choice for booting. Then hit [ESC] and Exit.

The system should now star t to boot from the CD resulting in a black screen with the banner:

"ISOLINUX 1.67 2002-02-03 Copyright (C) 1994-2001 H. Peter Anvin"

Or some such message.

At the bottom is the boot: prompt. You can type bare.i as the correct but cryptic response,
or simply hit [RET] for the default boot.

Loading and uncompressing will now star t.

The first request is for information about the keyboard.
Select qwerty/uk.map from the menu.

You may like to take this opportunity to test the key mapping.

And yes, read the help. It is a ’1’ to quit!

Login in as "root" with no password.

Now you must type: fdisk /dev/hda to look at the state of the first hard disk.
"m" for help.
Type p for print partition status of the disk.
There may be 3 par titions already installed on hda:

Disk /dev/hda:128 heads, 63 sectors, 847 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 Bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 * 1 760 3064288* 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 761 846 346752 5 Extended
/dev/hda3 761 846 346720* 7 HPFS/NTFS

Now type l to list the different types of partitions which you can set up.

6
Particularly note the 82 and 83 entries.
Quit fdisk, q, and take a look at the second disk:

fdisk /dev/hdb

What partitions are available already? Well it doesn’t matter because you will now delete them
all! Done it? d 1, d 2, d 3, d 4.

To install Linux it is advised to partition the disk:

Root partition / at least 500 MB

Swap partition /swap double main memory size (128...256....512 MB??)
User homes partition /homes depends on users, say 1 GB
Other stuff /var 100 MB, not really exact.

This adds up to 1.728 GB. But how big is the disk? Any extra space can be added to the root
par tition. So lets start with setting up a new par tition n for swap at 128 MB: P, 1, +128M.
Check the result using p.

However we have set the wrong partition type. It is now set as 83, a standard Linux partition, not
82, for swap.

Disk /dev/hdb: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 847 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 Bytes

Device Boot Star t End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdb1 1 33 133024+ 82 Linux swap

Now lets set up a partition for the user home directories. n, p, 2, [RET], +1000M

Disk /dev/hdb: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 847 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 Bytes

Device Boot Star t End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdb1 1 33 133024+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb2 34 287 1024128 83 Linux

Now lets set up a partition for the /var directories. n, p, 3, [RET], +100M

Disk /dev/hdb: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 847 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 Bytes

Device Boot Star t End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdb1 1 33 133024+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb2 34 287 1024128 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 288 313 104832 83 Linux

7
Now lets set up a partition for the main root directories. n, p, 4, [RET], [RET]

Disk /dev/hdb: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 847 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 Bytes

Device Boot Star t End Blocks Id System

/dev/hdb1 1 33 133024+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb2 34 287 1024128 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 288 313 104832 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 314 847 2153088 83 Linux

Check the partition table finally p

Repeat the operations if you need to correct an error, and then
Write the master boot record to disk w.
You should now return to the root@slackware prompt.

Enter the setup tool :

root@slackware setup

Now we are really installing! Read the 9 stages:

HELP, KEYMAP, ADDSWAP, TARGET, SOURCE, SELECT, INSTALL, CONFIGURE, EXIT

Go to KEYMAP, and select "qwer t/uk.map" and check it out. Remember? 1 to exit?

ADDSWAP
Select yes, for the first partition of the second disk drive.
/dev/hda partition 1
Now formatting

TARGET
Setting up target drives
Choose /dev/hdb4 as the largest for the file system root (/)
Choose quick format.
Choose ext3.
Choose 4096 byte blocks.
Then it formats the next partition.

Now select /dev/hdb2 for the treatment. Format it and label it /home

Now select /dev/hdb3 for the treatment. Format it and label it /var

SELECT
Select to install from CDROM, auto scan. Last chance to change the CD.

To save waiting time, I suggest you deselect every item from the list except the top one, the
Base Linux system. Use the [SPACE BAR] to toggle the selections ON/OFF. It will still take up to
30 mins to install

INSTALL
Use menu level of interaction. Chose only the Linux kernel and floppy disk driver. While reading
the CD, decompressing and loading up the hard drive, there is ver y little entertainment to be
had for the viewer.

8
 Viglen AN430TX Motherboard

* CPU socket 7, suppor ting Intel Pentium CPUs from 90MHz to 200MHz processors and 166MHz, 200MHz and 2
* Intel 82430TX (MTXC) and PC87307 I/O chipsets
* 512KB Pipeline Burst SRAM Level2 cache
* Two 168pin DIMM sockets for up to 256MB of SDRAM
* Onboard Yamaha OPL3-Sa3 audio with input for Line In, CD-ROM & Modem
* Onboard IDE Supports Bus Master and Ultra DMA IDE Supports up to 4 IDE drives
* 1 Floppy por t suppor ts 2 FDD
* 2 Serial por ts (COM1 & COM2)
* 1 Parallel port suppor ts ECP or EPP mode
* 2 PS/2 ports for Keyboard & Mouse
* Game/Joystick por t
* Mic, Line-In, and Line-Out connectors
* 2 Channel USB port
* Suppor ts LS-120 Floppy Drive
* 2 ISA, 3 PCI & 1 Shared ISA/PCI Expansion Card Slots
* IrDA compatible interface
* Desktop Management Interface (DMI)
* Flashable Phoenix BIOS
* Wake Up On LAN
* Viglen Par t Code PMPAN100

Diagram of Viglen AN430TX (1998 era)

9
 Function Jumper Configuration
Processor Voltage J6M1 1-2* 3.3V
2-3 3.6V
Password J9C1-A 1-2* passwd enable
2-3 passwd clear/disable
CMOS (NVRAM) Clear J9C1-A 4-5* keep
5-6 clear
Bios Setup Access J9C1-B 1-2* enabled
2-3 disabled
Reserved J9C1-B 4-5*
5-6
Host Bus Frequency J9C1-C See Table Below
Processor Frequency J9C1-D See Table Below
Bios Recovery J8A1 1-2* normal
2-3 recovery

Processor Configuration (J9C1-C, D)

The motherboard must be configured for the frequency of the installed processor. Table 30
shows the jumper settings for each frequency and the corresponding host bus, PCI bus, and ISA
bus frequencies.

10
 Processor Jumpers Host bus PCI bus ISA bus Bus/CPU
Frequency J9C1-C J9C1-D MHz MHZ MHz freq ratio
233 5-6 1-2 4-5 66 33 8.33 1.5
200 5-6 1-2 5-6 66 33 8.3 3
166 5-6 2-3 5-6 66 33 8.33 2.5
150 4-5 2-3 5-6 60 30 7.5 2.5
133 5-6 2-3 4-5 66 33 8.33 2
120 4-5 2-3 4-5 60 30 7.5 2
100 5-6 1-2 4-5 66 33 8.33 1.5
90 4-5 1-2 4-5 60 30 7.5 1.5

NOTE: The 233MHz jumper setting are the same as for 100Mhz, in this case the bios identifies
the processor and adjusts the clock speed automatically

Password Clear (J9C1-A) Use this jumper to clear the password if the password is forgotten.
The default setting is pins 1 -2 (password enabled). To clear the password, turn off the
computer, move the jumper to pins 2-3, and turn on the computer. Then, turn off the computer
and return the jumper to pins 1-2 to restore normal operation. If the jumper is in the 2-3 position
(password disabled), you cannot set a password.

Clear CMOS RAM (J9C1-A) This jumper resets the CMOS settings to the default values. This
procedure must be done each time the BIOS is updated. The default setting for this jumper is
pins 4 -5 (keep CMOS settings). To reset the CMOS settings to the default values, turn off the
computer, move the jumper to pins 5-6, then turn on the computer. When the computer displays
the message ?NVRAM cleared by jumper,? turn off the computer and return the jumper to pins
4-5 to restore normal operation.

BIOS Setup Access (J9C1-B) This jumper enables or disables access to the Setup program.
The default setting is pins 1-2 (access enabled). To disable access to the Setup program, move
the jumper to pins 2-3.

BIOS Recovery (J8A1) This jumper lets you recover the BIOS data from a diskette in the event
of a catastrophic failure. The default setting is pins 1-2 (normal operation). To recover the BIOS,
turn off the computer, move the jumper to pins 2-3, then turn on the computer to perform BIOS
recovery. After recovery, turn off the computer and return the jumper to pins 1-2 to restore
normal operation. See Section 3.1.12 for more details.

Processor Voltage (J6M1) This jumper sets the output of the onboard voltage regulator. For
processors that require Standard voltage, place the jumper on pins 1-2. For processors that
require VRE voltage, place the jumper on pins 2-3. Voltage specifications are as follow:

* Standard = 3.3 - 3.465 V

* VRE = 3.465 - 3.63 V

11
 Slackware-9.0

The contents of the Slackware-9.0 boot disk are:

|-- BOOTING.TXT Tips for troubleshooting boot problems.

|-- CHECKSUMS.md5 MD5 format file checksums.
|-- COPYING The GNU Public License.
|-- COPYRIGHT.TXT Slackware copyright and trademark information.
|-- CRYPTO_NOTICE.TXT Legal information about encryption in Slackware.
|-- ChangeLog.txt Log of system changes from Slackware 8.1 to 9.0.
|-- FAQ.TXT Frequently asked questions and answers.
|-- FILELIST.TXT List of files on the Slackware FTP site.
|-- GPG-KEY The GnuPG key used to verify Slackware packages.
|-- PACKAGES.TXT A detailed list of the core Slackware packages.
|-- SPEAKUP_DOCS.TXT Documentation for the Speakup speech synth software.
|-- SPEAK_INSTALL.TXT How to install with Speakup speech synthesis.
|
|-- Slackware-HOWTO Instructions for installing Slackware from CD.
| If you’re new to Slackware, star t with this.
|
|-- UPGRADE.TXT Instructions for upgrading from earlier versions.
|
|-- isolinux/ The ISOLINUX loader and initrd.img used to install
| | Slackware from a CD-ROM. You’ll also find the
| | PCMCIA and network images (these can be loaded
| | from the installation CD-ROM), and a README.TXT
| | describing how to create a Slackware installation
| | ISO image and burn it to CD-R.
| |
| |-- README.TXT How to burn a Bootable Slackware CD-ROM.
| |-- initrd.img Installation initrd (can also be loaded with Loadlin)
| |-- network.dsk Image containing network modules.
| ‘-- pcmcia.dsk Image containing PCMCIA modules.
|
|-- kernels/ Many precompiled Linux 2.4.20 kernel images.
| |
| |-- adaptec.s/ Adaptec kernel.
| |-- ataraid.s/ Kernel with ATA (IDE) RAID support.
| |-- bare.i/ Standard IDE kernel.
| |-- ibmmca.s/ IBM Microchannel kernel.
| |-- jfs.s/ IBM Journaled Filesystem +aic7xxx SCSI kernel.
| |-- loadlin16c.txt Loadlin README file.
| |-- loadlin16c.zip Loadlin boot loader (used to boot Linux from DOS)
| |-- lowmem.i/ Kernel that uses ver y little memory.
| |-- old_cd.i/ Old non-SCSI non-IDE CD-ROM support kernel.
| |-- pportide.i/ Parallel port IDE kernel.
| |-- raid.s/ SCSI RAID kernel.
| |-- scsi.s/ Suppor ts some SCSI cards (see bootdisks/README.TXT).
| |-- scsi2.s/ Suppor ts some SCSI cards (see bootdisks/README.TXT).
| |-- speakup.i/ bare.i + Speakup speech support.
| |-- xfs.i/ Kernel with support for SGI XFS.
| ‘-- zipslack.s/ Kernel with Iomega support.
|
‘-- slackware/ This director y contains the core software packages
| for Slackware 9.0.
|
|-- a/ The A (base) package series.
|-- ap/ The AP (applications) package series.
|-- d/ The D (development) package series.
|-- e/ The E (GNU Emacs) package series.
|-- f/ The F (FAQ/Documentation) package series.
|-- gnome/ The GNOME package series.
|-- kde/ The KDE package series.
|-- l/ The L (libraries) package series.
|-- n/ The N (networking) package series.
|-- t/ The T (TeX) package series.
|-- tcl/ The TCL (Tcl/Tk and related) package series.
|-- x/ The X (XFree86) package series.
|-- xap/ The XAP (X applications) package series.
‘-- y/ The Y (BSD games) package series.

12
Note that for space reasons, the KDEI (KDE i18n) series, and the K (Linux kernel source) series
could not be included on this ISO, and I apologize for the inconvenience. If you need KDE
translations or the pre-patched (with ext3 and ptrace fixes) kernel source package, you can pick
them up here:

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-9.0/slackware/kdei/
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-9.0/slackware/k/

Other things that aren’t on this disc that you might need to pick up individually are the boot
floppy images and rootdisks. But if you can boot this CD-ROM, you won’t need these. The
source code files can also be separately downloaded from the FTP site:

ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-9.0/

Thanks to Patrick Volkerding, volkerdi@slackware.com.

Read:
WILLIAMS R ’CSA’ Ch 2 & 3
MESSMER P ’The Indepensible PC Hardware Book’

13