Jan's Computer Basics: 10-2 The Front

Computer Basics

10 - What You See: On the Front

When you look at the front of your computer, you will probably see something a little different from the diagram to the right. There are a huge number of variations on the market. However, certain features are either standard or at least very common. We'll look at them starting with the bottom of the diagram.

Where you are: JegsWorks > Lessons > Computer Basics
	1. Computer Types
	2. Applications
	3. Input
	4. Processing
	5. Output
	6. Storage
	7. Computer to Computer
	8. System Software
	9. Programming

	10. What You See Intro On the Front: framed no frames On the Back: framed no frames On the Inside: framed no frames Power Protection Quiz
	11. Hands On!
	12. On Your Own

	Search Glossary Appendix

Buttons

Power	The Power button is most important. If you can't find this one, you won't get too far with your computer! This is either a push button or a flip switch that turns on the computer. Computers now put this on the front, but older models may have it on the side or even the back of the computer. There is an LED light to show you that the power is on.
Reset	The Reset button is used to restart the computer quickly. When the Reset button is pressed, called a Warm Boot, the computer shuts down but does not stop the hard drive's spinning. It then immediately starts up again. This saves time since if the hard drive is turned off, you must wait about 30 seconds to be sure that it has completely stopped before turning the power back on. Recall from the lesson on Storage: Caring for Disks that restarting the hard drive too soon can damage it. Sometimes it is necessary to do a Cold Boot, that is let the drive stop first and let the internals cool off for a bit before restarting, in order to clear up a computer glitch.
Turbo	The Turbo button is now obsolete on nearly all computers. This button made the computer's CPU run at a higher clock rate. On earlier models there were times this was not desirable. Thus a button to switch the Turbo mode on and off. More recent models don't use this feature.

Drives

Hard Drive

The hard drive is not accessible from the outside of the computer. It is completely internal. There is a LED light, however, to let you know when the drive is being accessed. On most machines you can clearly hear the drive starting up and when the head is moving around. Each drive has a different sound.

If your drive starts making a sound that is different from normal, something is wrong. It may be a software problem that is causing the drive to hunt around too much or it may be a hardware problem. Either way something needs to be fixed.

Removable Media Drives

Drives with removable media will be accessible from the front. This includes the two sizes of floppy drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, and other newer kinds like Zip drives.

Each drive will have a small LED light that will light up when that drive is being accessed. These are in green on the diagram.

You probably don't have all of these different kinds of drives. Notice that only a certain number will fit in the spaces provided in your case. There are external versions, too, that plug into the back of the computer. These are handy if you don't have room for another device or if you want to use the device on more than one computer. The internal types are usually faster though.

Sound is also an important diagnostic tool for these drives. Pay attention to what your drives sound like under normal conditions so you'll be able to catch problems right away.

A badly behaving drive can ruin the media you put in. If you suspect something is going wrong with a drive, don't use media with important data on it for testing. Use either a blank or something with unimportant data until you can be confident that the drive won't trash it!

USB port

Most new computers now have rectangular USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports on the front as well as on the back of the computer. It's much easier to use the ports on the front for connecting cameras and USB drives, like the one at the right.

A USB device can be connected or disconnected at any time without having to shut down or reboot the computer. For USB drives, be sure the activity light is off. You may need to Stop the device using the menu from the Safely Remove Hardware icon (in WinXP's notification tray).