Hardware

Full notes coming soon — here's what the syllabus covers for now:

• Extend hardware concepts from Grade 10:
• Overview of hardware as part of the system unit
• Describe the motherboard
• Purpose and role of the motherboard
• Components as part of the motherboard
• Purpose and role of a BIOS chip, CPU, RAM, ROM, slots, cards and buses
• Modular design
• Flow/transfer of data between components
• USB - PnP, U3
• Point-to-point connections
• Purpose and role of cache memory and caching
• Purpose and role of the expansion cards
• Memory as part of a computer system
• ROM, RAM - role and characteristics
• Temporary/permanent/magnetic/optic/solid state
• Difference in performance of different components and caching (including web caching and disk caching)