How do they work?

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To get into how they work you would need and electrical engineer. As your talking about how electricity travels on a motherboard through the paths that are laid out. That is well beyond things that are covered even in school PC classes as that is much more technical and well beyond most people's knowledge.

I mean i can sit here and rattle off about resistors, transistors and capacitors. But that doesnt do you any good when your asking how the millions of them work on a CPU. Your really asking something that is well beyond the scope of just about everyone on this site.
 
I don't think he meant your question is silly, just that's what he does to silly questions in general. Just like my post ;)
 
I really was hoping someone could tell me HOW they work... the parts themselves... and slay, silly question how?
yeah how can not really be answered. I have taken 2 years of computer engineering and i have no idea how i could possibly explain something like this. Like you would have to get down to the very logic gates that are on the chips. Were talking and,nor,xor, etc gates. 0's and 1's as in high and low voltages. Way to much to be answered.
 
A traditional HDD works by spinning a metal platter, with a magnetic 'head' positioned over the platter. Information is stored by exposing tiny parts of the metal platter (which is coated with a ferromagnetic material) to particular magnetic fields. To read the data back off, the head simply measures the magnetic field of the area it's trying to read.


At the base level, a CPU works with tiny logic gates. Data is sent through different areas of the chip depending on its content, and on what gates it's been through already. For info on logic gates, read up here.


A motherboard serves to connect all peripheral devices, as well as provide the necessary foundation for those devices to function. This might mean providing a stable voltage source for the CPU (by passing it through regulators, bridges, filtering it with capacitors, etc), or providing a way for the graphics card to get instructions from the CPU (bus lines, which in turn are also filtered, then boosted, etc etc etc).


RAM is used to store data that the system needs on a short term basis. It's basically like a very fast 'solid' hard drive, with a very fast connection to the North Bridge and CPU. Great description of how the data is stored and accessed here
 
On the most basic level a computer is just a machine that follows instructions.
You give it instructions, and it follows them 100% literally.

So in order to make a computer do what you want, you need to not only tell it what to do, but the exact steps to take in order to do it.
 
On the most basic level a computer is just a machine that follows instructions.
You give it instructions, and it follows them 100% literally.

So in order to make a computer do what you want, you need to not only tell it what to do, but the exact steps to take in order to do it.

EXACTLY.

A computer can do practically anything you tell it to do. BUT you have to tell it to do it. And it does EXACTLY what you say, not what you mean to say.

I know that sounds jumbled like it doesn't make sense...but it'll sink in.
 
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