EXAM REVISION

EXAM REVISION

1. HARDWARE

   • Hardware is the physical part of the computer system- the parts of the computer you can touch and see
     • A motherboard, a CPU, a keyboard and a monitor are all items of hardware.

2. SOFTWARE

   • Software is a collection that can be 'run' on a computer. These instructions tell the computer what to do.
     • Software is not a physical thing ( but it can of course be stored on a physical medium such as a CD-ROM), it is just a bunch of codes.
       • An operating system such as windows XP or mac OS X, applications such as microsoft word, and the instructions that control a robot are all examples of a software.

3. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

   • computer hardware is the physical components that make up the computer system. Hardware is useless without software to run on it.
     • Software is instructions that tell the computer hardware what to do. Software is useless unless there is hardware to run it on.
       • For a computer system to be useful it has to consist of both hardware and software

4. CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT

   • The CPU is the brain of the computer. It is the device that carries out software instructions.

5. MAIN MEMORY

   • Any data or instructions that are to be processed by the CPU must be placed into main memory (sometimes known as a primary storage