Introduction to Computers and It's used in Water Management

History of Computers

In the early nineteenth century with the growth in population, the united states Census Bureau realized that its existing methods of tabulating and analyzing the ten-yearly U.S.National Census had become totally inadequate, as a result of this the computer evolved. However the birth of computers depend upon many other factors, such as the acceleration of certain technological improvements from the early 1900’s, the availability of vast sums of money for computer development as a result of world war-2, changes in Government attitudes and the evaluation of basic computing theories as developed by Von Neumann, Shannon and tiring.

Computer Generation

1.   1^st Generation (1940-52) Vacum Tubes

Main Features – Slow speed more power consumption constant maintenance manual assembling of individual components.

2.   2^nd Generation (1952-64) Transistor

Main Features – Fast speed less power consumption maintenance manual assembling of individual components.

3.   3^rd Generation (1964-71) Integrated Circuits

Main features – Faster speed less power required more reliable less human labor at the assembling stage.

4.   4^th Generation (1971-80) Large scale Integrated Circuits (LSIC)

Main features – Faster speed cheapest direct data entry artificial intelligence

General use of computers

Many of the routine activities in today’s society are being performed by computers. For example, when we go on holiday, our plane seats are often reserved by computers. The traffic in some major cities is, to a degree, controlled by computers. The egg which you might have had for breakfast may have been laid ( no, not by computer) by a chicken whose life history is on record on a computer file, many of the bills we pay (rates, gas,  electricity, telephone, insurance, etc.) are calculated and printed by a computer.

The original objective for inventing the computer was to create fast calculating the machine. But in our 80% of computing today, the applications are of a non-mathematical or non-numerical nature.

Important Characteristics of Computer

There are four important characteristics of any computer system. These characteristics make a computer so powerful and almost indispensable for voluminous repetitive or highly scientific jobs.

(A)      Speed: with the development of technology, speeds of a computer have also increased. This has led to many scientific projects which were previously impossible. The control of moon launching would not have been feasible without computers and neither would today's more scientific approach to weather prediction.

(B)        Memory: Computer memory is everlasting as against human memory.

(C)        Accuracy: The computer’s accuracy is consistently high. Normally for a human being accuracy is lost while achieving speed, this is not true in the case of computers. Computers results are hundred percent accurate unless there are technological error program error or poorly designed system.

(D)    Versatility: Computer seems capable of performing almost any task, provided that the task can be reduced to a series of logical steps. Because of this it is compared with the human and has become so powerful.

Basic concepts of computer

Hardware: refers to physical/machinery or tangible items.

Software: refers to logical or intangible items. i.e. system programs and application programs that can run on a computer.

A computer can be defined as a machine which manipulates data according to a stored program executed within i.e. Any computer system basically works on the data and computer program, prepared to solve a particular problem as an out it gives results of the inputting the data or program, processing the using the program and outputting the results.

Generally, there are three types of computers available in the market.

1.              Mainframe computer

2.              Mind computer

3.              Microcomputer

Hardware :

IBM PC :

IBM first announced, “the IBM personal computer” in 1981. It was based on Intel 8088 microprocessor. IBM PC was compared with the other available 8 – bit computers in the market. None of the microcomputers could match to the IBM PC as 8088’ s processing capabilities are more advanced than the 8 – bit processors.

In the following years, several other microcomputers vendors brought out equivalent personal computers using the 8088 processor. The equivalent computers could use the same software as IBM PC. The disk media between IBM PC and these equivalents could be exchanged. Thus these equivalent systems in the market are nicknamed as IBM PC clones. IBM PC clones are typically designed on the following type of configuration: 8088 CPU, 640 KB RAM, Keyboard, 2 Floppy drives (each of 360 KB), power supply, printer port.

IBM PC/XT :

In order to provide more secondary storage, PC is extended (PC/XT) to accommodate one Winchester of 10 MB. Several clones for PC/XT’s came into the market from other vendors.

The configuration of PC/XT include the following :

8088 CPU, 640 KB RAM (Maximum), one floppy drive (of 360 kb), one Winchester disk (of 10 MB), Monitor, Keyboard, Power supply, Printer port.

PC and PC/XT limitation :

In PC and PC/XT, 8088 is used. This processor can address only 1 MB memory, the system uses 360 kb for keeping the date and progress some of them permanently in the memory. About 128K goes for video memory. Some of this programme which is permanently resident in the memory are called basic input – output system (or BIOS), there are put in read only memory (ROM). We cannot write anything on the memory. And the BIOS existing on ROM are not erased when the power is put off. Remaining memory out of 1 MB, after deducting 360 KB is 640 KB. This is available for keeping our programme and date while we process them.

IBM PC

In order to provide more main memory, more processing capabilities, IBM came out with advanced technology (AT), enhancing personal computing power. PC/AT is constructed around intel 80286 microprocessor. Even the clone market followed the same. Because of its 24-bit address mechanism. 80286 can address 16 MB of RAM. Thus AT’s RAM can go up 16 MB. Its data bus is of 16 lines and processing speed enhanced. PC/AT gave almost 6 times the processing speed than the simple PC.

Variations :

Advancements in the technology provided processors with more clock rate, more better secondary storage facilities, and communication facilities. Hence PC compatible with the microprocessor at 10 MHZ and 1.2 MB capacity drives are commonly seen with the user’s improvements came in XT also. PC/XT’s at 10 to 12 MHz CPU, 20MB Winchester drives took birth. Throughout the developments, one important factor to be noted is that the personal computer becomes synonym with the IBM PC. The whole market has gone to fractured by IBM now. However, the PC market has grown so much the PC based applications are not likely to be diverted to other systems. PC environment will continue to grow.

Upward compatibility :

The programmes written for IBM PC could run PC/XT as the processor is the same and the architecture is maintained as same.

However, 80286 based PC/AT also could run all the PC based software apart from the other 80286 based programs.

In all these systems, the common feature is the original instruction set of 8086. The instruction set of 8086 has been retained in 8086,80286, and 80846 although additional instructions could be introduced. This feature greatly helped the PC environment to grow vertically.

PC/AT-386/PC/AT/-486

A personal computer with 80386/80486 as the microprocessor. This 32-bit processor has brought the mainframe computer power to the desktop. CPU operates on 32/bits. 32-bit address bus can address 4 gigabytes of memory. All computer systems have three basic components.

1.   Input device

2.    Central processing unit

3.   Output device

We will discuss Input, Output devices and CPU of Microcomputer. In a microcomputer system, an Input device can be.

Keyboard :

Two types of keyboard are available for the personal computer. Standard PC/XT uses 84 keys and PC/XT uses 101 keys. They have separate numeric pad also.

Mouse :

It is a pointing device used for controlling cursor movement on the monitor screen. Many graphics program require a mouse for speedy cursor movement.

Digitizer :

For engineering designs applications they are used in converting graphics such as pictures and drawings in the digital data that can be processed by the computer system. It normally consists of a flat table that the user traces over with pen-like styles or another cursor device.

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