Rudy's Comptia A+ 220-901 & 220-902 Class Notes Cards

Front 1

ISO

Back 1

International Standards Organization: An international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.

Front 2

Volts

Back 2

Force/pressure of electricity; represented as v.

Front 3

Amperes

Back 3

Flow/current (this is what hurts you!). Can also be volume; represented as amps.

Front 4

Current

Back 4

A flow of electric charge; represented as i.

Front 5

Resistance

Back 5

A measure of the difficulty to pass an electric current through an electrical conductor; represented as R. Resistance also slows down electrical travel.

Front 6

Ohms

Back 6

Unit of resistance; represented as Ω.

Front 7

Conductors

Back 7

Aids the flow of electricity.

Front 8

Insulators

Back 8

Impedes the flow of electricity.

Front 9

What are the 2 types of electricity?

Back 9

Alternating Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC)

Front 10

Alternating Current

Back 10

Comes in many forms, but the standard American outlets output at 115 VAC. 220 VAC is a different American standard normally used for larger appliances such as washers and fridges.

Front 11

Direct Current

Back 11

Is usually used for delicate equipment such as computers and most electronics.

Front 12

What are the 4 Factors in transferring electricity?

Back 12

Material, temperature, distance, and the cross-sectional area.

Front 13

Attenuation

Back 13

The distance a signal can travel without significant degradation.

Front 14

Ohms Law

Back 14

I (amperes) = V (voltage) / R (resistance)

Front 15

PSU

Back 15

(Power Supply Unit): in a computer, it is the component that turns AC to DC.

Front 16

ESD

Back 16

Electro-Static Discharge; static shock caused by the human body coming into contact with a conductor of electricity.

Front 17

Brownout

Back 17

Caused when electrical voltage drops significantly.

Front 18

Blackout

Back 18

Caused when power is completely lost.

Front 19

Spike

Back 19

When voltage unexpectedly goes up for a brief moment.

Front 20

Surge

Back 20

Primarily caused by lightning.

Front 21

Joules

Back 21

A measure and unit of energy (ex: Watt = 1 Joule per second)

Front 22

Watt

Back 22

Measure of work/energy done over time

Front 23

Hertz

Back 23

1 cycle per second

Front 24

Semiconductor

Back 24

Both a conductor and insulator

Front 25

Transistor

Back 25

Miniaturized high speed switch and regulates both AC and DC current

Front 26

Integrated Circuit

Back 26

Transistors stacked on a semiconductor; usually made of silicon.

Front 27

Deci

Back 27

10

Front 28

Centi

Back 28

100

Front 29

Kilo

Back 29

1,000

Front 30

Mega

Back 30

1,000,000 (abbr. as M)

Front 31

Giga

Back 31

1,000,000,000 (abbr. as G)

Front 32

Tera

Back 32

1,000,000,000 (abbr. as T)

Front 33

Centa

Back 33

1/100 or 10-2 (abbreviated as c)

Front 34

Milli

Back 34

1/1,000 or 10-3 (abbr. as m)

Front 35

Micro

Back 35

1/1,000,000 or 10-6 (abbr. as mc)

Front 36

Nano

Back 36

1/1,000,000,000 (abbr. as n)

Front 37

Pica

Back 37

1/1,000,000,000,000 (abbr. as p)

Front 38

Bit

Back 38

The smallest unit of information that can be transmitted, usually as a 1 or 0

Front 39

Byte

Back 39

8 bits; most often used unit

Front 40

Nibble

Back 40

4 bits; not used as often as Byte

Front 41

Octal

Back 41

A base “8” number system

Front 42

Hexadecimal

Back 42

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A(10), B(11), C(12), D(13), E(14), F(15)

Noted as base “H”; 8421 Rule can be used to easily convert between binary and hexadecimal.

Front 43

Diode

Back 43

Regulates direction of current.

Front 44

Capacitor

Back 44

Regulates voltage by temporarily storing energy.

Front 45

What does a PSU output?

Back 45

Outputs to DC in +3.3V, +5V, -5V, +12V, and -12V

Front 46

What are standard PUS outputs?

Back 46

Molex (4 pin connector for most PATA devices), Berg (4 pin connector for floppy drives), and SATA Power connector (15 pin “L” shaped).

Front 47

What are different characteristics of ESD?

Back 47

Electo-Static Discharge can be about 3,500 to 10,000 volts depending on the visibility. The body carries it at most times. It can harm PC components very easily. 10V is enough to damage parts.

Front 48

Chassis

Back 48

Often known as the case.

Front 49

Motherboard

Back 49

Can be referred to as the spinal cord of a computer. It is usually the first piece to attach to the chassis. Almost all motherboards have an I/O panel built in. Can also be called MoBo.

Front 50

Omnibus

Back 50

(Or bus for short) Is the main passageways of the motherboard.

Front 51

What are the 3 main buses?

Back 51

The Address Bus which locates components, the Data Bus which controls the transmission and speed of data (Hz), and the Power Bus which distributes power to the PC’s components.

Front 52

System Timer Chip

Back 52

Tiny piece of quartz that controls the speed that data is transferred on the board by giving instructions to the data bus.

Front 53

Processor Socket

Back 53

Where the CPU goes in.

Front 54

CPU

Back 54

Central Processing Unit: always fits into a socket; known as the “brain” of a computer.

Front 55

RAM

Back 55

Random Access Memory; also known as the“consciousness” of the computer. This is where programs and files are stored in temporarily when in use.

Front 56

Peripherals

Back 56

Input and output devices outside of computer. The necessary peripherals for communication between the computer and user are the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Front 57

Expansion Ports

Back 57

Used to extend the purpose and functions of a computer.

Front 58

ENIAC

Back 58

Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator

Front 59

RISC

Back 59

Reduced Instruction Set Computing; simplified, detailed sets of instruction.

Front 60

CISC

Back 60

Complex Instruction Set Computing; simple, generic sets of instruction for the computer to process most of the work to interpret. In other words, where single instructions can execute several low-level operations or are capable of multi-step operations or addressing modes within single instructions.

Front 61

Pipelining

Back 61

Using wait-states to queue up more instructions so that little time is wasted; in other words, asking for a new set of instructions while the old/previous instructions are still processing.

Front 62

HTT

Back 62

Hyper Threading Technology; Intel's proprietary simultaneous multithreading (SMT) implementation used to improve parallelization of computations (doing multiple tasks at once) performed on x86 microprocessors.

Front 63

HT

Back 63

Hyper Transport; the system bus architecture of modern AMD central processing units.

Front 64

Active Cooling

Back 64

Cooling a computer and its components with devices that move in some way. Simplest form is with fans, but also includes things like peltier cooling, water cooling, etc.

Front 65

Passive Cooling

Back 65

Cooling a computer and its components withno moving parts; usually cools via heat sinks and ambient air passageways, etc.

Front 66

Low Level Formatting

Back 66

Creates the physical format that dictates where data is stored on the disk. Modern hard drives are low-level formatted at the factory for the life of the drive. A PC can not perform an LLF on a modern IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk, and doing so would destroy the hard disk.

Front 67

Track

Back 67

A circular path on the surface of a disk or diskette on which information is magnetically recorded and from which recorded information is read.

Front 68

Sector

Back 68

A subdivision of a track on a magnetic disk or optical disc.

Front 69

Servo

Back 69

The map or key for a hard drive. It tells heads where the tracks and sectors are located.

Front 70

Format

Back 70

The process used to create a file system. It is a process for preparing a storage device for data to be organized on a drive.

Front 71

NTFS

Back 71

New Technology File System; commonly used by Windows.

Front 72

FAT16 and FAT32

Back 72

File Allocation Table; commonly used by MS-DOS.

Front 73

Partition

Back 73

Breaks up hard drive into smaller pieces that are ready to receive data.

Front 74

BIOS

Back 74

Basic Input/Output Software; main controller of all computer components.

Front 75

POST

Back 75

Power On Self Test; part of BIOS used to make sure necessary components of the computer can be accessed to function before turning control over to BIOS.

Front 76

OS

Back 76

Operating System; the environment the user uses to use the computer.

Front 77

Productivity Software

Back 77

Applications user uses in the OS.

Front 78

DOS Syntax

Back 78

Usually structured as "command source target" (ex: C:\ help.txt E:\)

Front 79

Memory Controller

Back 79

Also known as Memory Controller Chip (MCC) or Memory Host Controller; it performs fetching and prefetching. It also decides what to ask for and where to send information and store information. Controls graphics, PCIe, USB 3.0, etc.

Front 80

Chipset

Back 80

The North Bridge and South Bridge referred together make up the Chipset.

Front 81

Zero Insertion Force

Back 81

Requires very little to no force to install.

Front 82

Pin Grid Array

Back 82

Standard processor layout for Intel and AMD until Intel developed their modern, newer sockets.