29 November 2013
Hi guys
we've had a little influx of members new to building so.. as you do.. I thought I'd share some info.
My speciality is Operating Systems. (I hope Rob does one of these on networking, he was a network admin a few years back as you might already know). I VBoxed for many years as it was a hobby of mine, not done it now since 2011 but i keep a hand in reading up about OS's from time to time. but in that time I learnt a lot.. I think, .. about what on earth is going on inside your computer.
My info might not be perfect but it'll at least give you an idea of the concepts involved. .. I hope!
[now please imagine Hitchhiker's Guide voice in your head for the remainder of the article. thank you!]
1. Hardware
far far away in a sleepy land known as 'Asia' there are a whole huge team of 'Asians' working away.. they work in cooperation with the States and sometimes Japan (yes Asians too but not the main place and kind of owned by America ).. and sometimes Germany of 'Europe'. The idea is to take sand and make it into Silicone. that Silicone then becomes the chips we use. they use a form of engraving called 'lithography'.. they do it to nanometers.. this isn't custom engraving for wedding rings and they don't even do it if you fone them up and offer £20. . all chips start this way, blank. then have the ability engraved in them for a programmable purpose.
2. Bios/UEFI
not really a Sex Pistols song* but a way to manage all those chips in a more orderly fashion. stop go look listen. all that jazz.
Think of the BIOS as a teeny tiny operating system like windows. but with a few set commands. .. down here it rules all the chips. it itself his its own chip where the data for its execution is stored. but it will never tell the other chips where in case they stage a mutiny. which only happened once in 1999, in a small house in Skegness the owner was even more surprised when the SAS broken in and torched the offending computer involved. He was heard to remark ' that's the last time I buy a Gateway computer'. These days however it is a new system of UEFI which is even more like a small operating system. these sub-systems continue to work even after windows boots.. controlling your drives your CPU power options and a few more things besides. ..teasmade.
3. HAL layer
ok so im no expert here but.. here goes.
Hardware Abstraction Layer.. the 'HAL' YES JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIE WITH THE CRAZY SENTIENT AI
This is a level up here.. inside the main part of Windows is something called a 'Kernel' its a set of around 80 instructions* to make things 'work'. it chitchats and has coffee with the bios and the hal layer and all have a hopefully good time and no fights breaks out and someone shoots someone's dog over a confusion about who was meant to pay.. 'should we just have gone dutch?'.
The HAL is connected to both the BIOS and the registry.. which looks a little like a tree in windows. it tells the registry what on earth is going on below.. its so everything is organized and you don't have the kernel having a heartattack if it ever saw what the desktop wallpaper was. who would have guess windows was so ...organised!
Let's hope Windows does not become sentient, and just go on the internet and look at naughty pictures and be slow and complain when we ask it 'did you do that task yet?? ' ..but then we notice it sat on the couch drinking beer all day and not loading the drivers correctly !
4. Registry.
Thinks its a tree, like some hippies did in the 60's but it's actually a complicated but simplified way of storing data in a manageable way for the purposes of supposedly quick access. this myth has existed for millenia.. when the code was first written on the inside of a cave c2500BC by Homsfelt Grabaoffeltz, the very first MS employee on record. .. note if the kernel is LARGE then this hurts the process access time for the registry. this is why Linux is faster, and why Windows needs a Virus Checker at all.
But also Linux People like Jazz and coffee bars too much so we won't talk them. shhh. be quiet, they might not hear us.
5. GUI
Graphical User Interface. its what you see. there is a window manager also but basically. its this.. your browser and what you are seeing now.
if some day you find yourself on a spaceship and they tell you to 'use the hologram!'..and you answer 'oh! you have a holographic GUI' they will be so impressed they will give you a kudos star on the MS forum website.
no cattle prod for 3 dayz reward for you!
I hope you enjoyed this light hearted look at: what on earth I just said.
and.. maybe we can do this again sometime.. no cattle prods this time .. honest
Dava.
* (bye bye EMI)
*(Last I heard Linux had around 28 instructions, so much cleaner/faster, but still breaks almost all the time.. exaggeration tho. but I am sick of using terminal!)
* and yes I know I am saying Hardware Abstraction Layer Layer. but habit.
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