How do computers *actually* work?

Alan turing invented computers who used it in Enigma, to stop hitler who was good.
Therefore computers are evil.

On a side note, intelligent design by those people who talk about those things that you don't understand. The people that stand in computers and wear lab coats? Yep, those kind of guys.
 
take a look at the fetch execute cycle, how hard drives work and store data, how vram works, how regular ram stores values, how graphics cards work and then you might have it. its all out there, google these and you can start to get a basic idea. the way i have learnt is by doing AS level computing
 
shaffaaf27 said:
its amazing that someone one time thought of making a machine out of the blue that could program somethingg. how do even come with the concept on how to make that?
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reverse engineering UFO stuff from Roswell, its funny how all the advances we have had have been since that time;)
 
raikesi said:
take a look at the fetch execute cycle, how hard drives work and store data, how vram works, how regular ram stores values, how graphics cards work and then you might have it. its all out there, google these and you can start to get a basic idea. the way i have learnt is by doing AS level computing
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As computing?
Speaking from experience, this subject is a waste of time and the only good bit is you get to learn programming.
Reciting outdated stuff is wasted time and Electronics does a much better job at explaining the most.
 
i found a really nice thing explaining how a graphics card works, taking a game from the hard drive to the screen, in nice simple details about 2-4 weeks ago.... now if only i could find it.

not sure if it would go into the detail you want, but it was great for people who know very little about computers.

however, as its been said a lot, you can do an entire degree on the subject

*edit*
aha, found it. i actually favourited it
(inb4 OMG U nerd)

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_1.html
the bit your after is on pages 2, 3 and 4, but i figured you might want to read the introduction first. it is actually a guide to tweaking game settings to get the most out of your graphics card

if you liked the guide, have a look here for all his 'system' guides
http://www.tweakguides.com/System.html
 
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rickh said:
You're going to have to break that question down into components.
It's not going to be answered in one post that's for sure!

Here's a nice video on LCD monitors:

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Thanks for that :D I recently took apart a laptop to replace it's screen and decided to rip apart the broken one and was amazed by the various sheets, i wanted to know what each did at the time but never bothered to look it up. That video though explains it in a really easy to understand manner, so cheers for posting that :D
 
chaosdestro0 said:
As computing?
Speaking from experience, this subject is a waste of time and the only good bit is you get to learn programming.
Reciting outdated stuff is wasted time and Electronics does a much better job at explaining the most.
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when did you do it? they replaced the whole syllabus 2 years ago. can you do electronics at A level?
 
raikesi said:
when did you do it? they replaced the whole syllabus 2 years ago. can you do electronics at A level?
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you can certainly do electronics at A level. it was offered im my school. i doubt it will be offered in many places though as my school specialised in the science and tech areas
 
a Computer is Seriously Complex!

But for a simple breakdown of what you was asking about Storing Data.

Basically...

if a cable has power running through it then it is ON (1 in Binary) else its OFF (0 in Binary). So using multiple cables you can create storage. Lets have a Basic one. For 64k Memory. Yes thats right. 64K! 65536 Bytes of storage. You could store 8 bits of information (8x 1's or 0's for example. 01100110) in each byte. Each byte of storage would have its own Unique address. when storing information to be able to select the right byte of information which you wish to overwrite / read you would need 16 cables going to the storage module each capable of sending ethier 1 or 0. This will give you 2 to the power 16 combinations. 2^16 = 65536 Combinations.

So if you wish to Access the 3rd byte in storage you could access by turning cable 0 and 1 on (0000000000000011 in binary.)

So yeah Very Complicated and yet amazing how fast it can run :O :O

EDIT: This is what ive learned in my First Year Doing Computer Science in my Computer System Architecture Module.
 
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I understand turing machines, binary, storage, logic gates, the part that gets me is how does the system recognize different bits of code, how does it split 01010000010101010 into say 01010, 000010 and 101010?
 
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