Hardware and Software

Monitor

• Cathode Ray Tube Monitor:

It is invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun. A beam of electrons strikes towards the CRT, and the collision of electrons with phosphorus produce light.(more about this topic and LED also).

• Liquid Crystal Display Monitor (LCD):

It uses thin film transistor technology to display. The TFT is a part of the LCD. The main difference between LCD and TFT monitor is that the TFT monitor uses a tiny transistor for each pixel on the display. This allows the electrical current that illuminates the display to be turned on and off at a faster rate. Which makes the display brighter and shows motion smoother. These transistors are used in high-quality flat panel LCDs. The LCD monitor’s do not use this technology due to this LCD display could not keep up with fast moving images.

Characteristics of a Monitor:

Dot pitch is also called pixel pitch. It is the measurement that represents the diagonal distance between colored phosphorous dots on the display screen. The dot pitch for monitor in personal computer ranges from 0.15mm - 0.30mm. Refresh rate represents the number of times the image is displayed per second. The number is measured in Hz. Higher refresh rate less image flicker on the screen refresh rate less than the 60Hz produces an image flickering, meaning the image appears again and again.

Monitor Cable Technology:

1. Video Graphics Array (VGA):
VGA card represents the computer display standard introduced with the IBM in 1987. It is a video adapter, which is used for transferring the video signals in the monitor. A generic VGA has 15 pins and each pin (except of 3 spare pins) is defined for transferring a particular color signal. The display information is sent to the monitor in the analog form through a VGA. Nowadays VGA adapters not fully support the use of digital monitors, a new standard cable DVI has been designed.

2. Digital Video Interface (DVI):
DVI technology is based on transition minimized differential signaling (TMDS), which introduces a transmission method for sending digital information to a PC. It is developed by silicon image, which produces a high-speed digital-interface. TMDS receives signal from the resolution and refresh rate that the monitor uses, and spreads the signals out over the bandwidth to optimize the data transfer from the system (CPU) to monitor.

BIOS:

The BIOS Setup utility is installed with a set of default value designed that ensures that the system operates efficiently. The Bios setup utility stores information about the motherboard components and the configuration of other devices that are connected to it and use this information to test and initialize the components when it is started.

In case you want to add new components to your system such as the disk drive, then you will have to make changes to the BIOS setup utility. In certain circumstances, the system may generate an error message, which make changes to the BIOS setup utility. This happens when the system finds an error during the power on self-test that it carries out at startup. 

POST:

The POST stands for Power on Self-Test. POST is a diagnostic testing sequence that runs a computer's basic input/output system to determine if the keyboard, mouse, RAM, disk drive and other hardware components are working correctly then the computer begins to boot. However, if the hardware components are not detected or it is not working properly, the BIOS generates an error message. It acts as an interface between the operating system and hardware when booting.

Setup:
The setup function is a menu-drive program. It helps you configure the motherboard and the chipset settings.

Bootstrap Loader:

It is a program which resides in the ROM of the computer and is automatically executed by the processor when the computer is turned on. It is the responsibility of the bootstrap loader to load the operating system from the floppy or hard disk drives to load the operating system towards the normal functioning of the computer.

Manufacturers of BIOS:

i) American Megatrends Inc. (AMI): AMI was the 1st manufacturer to build motherboards based on Intel's 386 and 486 processor platform. It was founded in 1984.

ii) Award: It is a leading manufacturer of BIOS, and Now merged with Phoenix Technologies.

iii) MR BIOS: It was manufactured by Microid Research Inc. which was founded in 1989.

iv) Phoenix Technologies: It was founded in 1979 and developed its 1st commercial BIOS in 1983.