- HARDWARE
- A computer is comprised of several pieces of hardware acting together to provide the input and output of a specific program or human interaction.
- Some of the specific types of hardware are:
- Mouse / Keyboard / Monitor
- Motherbaord
- Processor (CPU)
- RAM
- FIRMWARE
- For a computer to boot up and work, a series of events unfold, starting with the firmware
- The firmware initializes the motherboard’s hardware and controls the boot process
- Three types of firmware are common in today’s computers:
- Basic Input / Output System (BIOS)
- Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)
- Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
- Although EFI and UEFI are not technically a BIOS, most documentations refer to it as such
- Firmware is contained within an Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-only Memory (EPROM)
- the EPROM is also referred to as flash memory
- When a computer is turned on, the firmware (in the EPROM) performs a Power-on Self Test (POST)
- Through the settings in the BIOS, the computer is initialized to a ‘known’ operational state
- From this state, a boot loader can be run (usually from the first hard disk), and control is passed from the firmware to the boot loader.
- The boot loader will then pass all information to the Operations System (OS) which will allow for a usable state.
- Once the OS is booted, it will use its own drivers to access the computer hardware