Day 25

I have not posted lately as I had the flu, But let me get started.        Feb/27/2013

Today was actually a great day, We started out by working in the "box". We had previously wiped and installed a windows O/S on a pc that needed repair in class, I had to learn how to mount a ISO image(the o/s) and then put the image onto a flash drive, as a NTFS file, But the NTFS file did not computer. So I used fat32, Anyways I  partitioned a pc, and then loaded a O/S onto the computer. Only to find out when I came back to class, Some peer fiddled with my computer, But it is my fault because I left the dang thing open.

Anyways so to continue, This morning we took some more pcs that needed wiping and installments, and did what we do best, or worst depending on whom you are speaking of (I may be the worst ;)  I had a fairly rudimentary job as my PC was wiped , So I had to swap some files from my teachers laptop, and put them on my flash drive, Then moving them onto My own laptop and installing a windows file to put the windows 7 starter edition onto my flash drive, the said operation probably took about half an hour, After all this was said and done it worked like it was no ones business and installed no problem. So Lunch was aten, snacks were had. 

We moved onto some IC3 "stuff" lol I will refer to ic3 subject as stuff. So we learnt what the ribbons and tabs did in certain micro soft office programs.

We also learn't the proper steps to installing and updating a O/S even though we did this already, The review was good just to keep the said process fresh and embedded in our brain.

We then did a IC3 quiz online I scored 80% Only to do utterly terrible on the A+ test of the day.

Anyways Ladies and Gent's I will be logging off. 

oh yeah, I have a server I will be setting up this saturday, I will keep you all posted!

-Mark Bartlett

Day 20

Today we went over IC3, We went over comparisons on buying laptops and giving a presentation.
We also did some computer hardware system, But I left after lunch because I had oral surgery recently and my gum line was really giving me trouble I had to run to the dentist(Not literally).
I will give a more in depth blog about day 21.
-Mark Bartlett

Day 19

So ladies and gentlemen                                                                                    Feb/19th/2013                                                                                
Welcome to another blog entry from my most excellent ITTechnician class!

So today we went over some more IC3 how exciting.

This included not limited to identifying  file types and matching them with the proper application.
We went into a bit more detail about creating sub folders and organizing the said folders.

We then jumped into identifying SATA or PATA hard drives before implementing the hard drive.
Note: Read the hard drive manual before setting up the jumpers.
After the hard drive is hard wired in, You now deal with bios and CMOS; From here you go on to setting up  dual partitions if you like, and formatting the hard drive.

We move onto the FAT system(fat 16 2 gb fat 32 4kb cluster) there is also fat 64 which is amazing.

Anyways we go over some more minor sections and error messages, But I'm going to cut this blog entry short, I have to make some flash cards. Ciao everyone

-Mark Bartlett

IC3 day

Feb/18/2013

So our class finally got into our IC3 books, and did a few rudimentary exercises.

We have gone over Operating systems quite extensively.  

Alot of the review was of the 3 different flavors, and the sub categories that were in said flavors.

We also went over the difference between the hardware and the O/S(operating system)

The O/S "performs the following actions- serves as a logical interface for the user and the hardware, Manages co-ordinates and services"

Here is a quote in regards to hardware "Hardware asks something to happen O/S makes it happen

provides logical environment in which application software can execute on the pc"

The O/S consists of 3 different "part's"

The" Kernel is loaded into the memory-contains the basic functions of the os which are memory management input output, file management, communications

The kernel provides services for communications software and the user interface.

Services that are not included in the kerner\l are called into memory temporarily and are executed as there needed."

The" User interface

Excerpts commands from the user and interprets them, this facilitates communication between the os and the user

Command interpreter

This is the gooey in the graphical environment and the command line interfaces, so non graphical"

And the "File System

Provides the methods used to organize files on the storage media

Storage-Access

To store files on the media and to provide access control and other types of file protection."

We also went quite a bit more in-depth, But those quotes are a good just of the situation.

We also went into task bar options and a few more small procedures, Moving on we were asked to choose a pc to log and document for the class Data base of computers that we will be working on and repairing throughout the remainder of the course.

-Mark Bartlett

Day 17

Welcome gentlemen.

So we started our day out right with some prevention by user steps and protocols, Then we moved onto computer process' a bit. We also covered trouble shooting between hardware and software, And I personally always say this, But NEVER ASSUME anything.

And once again we dabbled in powerpoint I will post the slide on this blog, It is on a need to know basis until then.

We then touched base on theories of trouble shooting,t he most common problems and then what to carry on you while doing repairs, I could go on but in other words we are trouble shoot pros now.

Moving on we went into Databases, This is a neat one! I cannot explain too much as its pretty basic You go into a program and create a few databses to fetch information from, and the info correlates with each other.

Now the real sweet part of today and maybe for awhile was actually getting a shipment of pcs to replace in the school it self, My team(I gave Colton leadership for this) did phenomenal IMO. We went further then we had too, And we left the place looking better then it was. Apparently the other groups disbanded and were all over the place.

Well on that note, I'm going to make my "brunch" and go enjoy the afk weather!

-Mark Bartlett

Day 16

Hey guys, I'm really cutting back on my blogs until I do more hardware as I really enjoy that part, And I also have two other classes to catch up on after classes.

But lets get started on day 16, We had to split up and group up and then review all of our pop quizs lately and decided who would write up the answers for each quiz; Then when all the writing is said and done, We exchange information for study purposes.
We also went over video Codecs today; video wrappers, dvd region codes and Blu ray region codes. and messed around a bit with mixing songs on acid 7.0, On this note we also did some video editing a few crops here and few crops there.

Near the end we went over operationl procedurs, Safety for on the job site and the Traits of a tech.

 Ah almost forgot, We also took apart some pcs with a group of 3' one of our partners left, We then sped up the process though even with a man down! Our pc was the first taken apart and cataloged, and then the first up and running as well, With extra parts in it to boot!
Ah ok ladies and gents sorry for the late posts. But enjoy!

-Mark Bartlett

Day 15

Another Excel day!

So today our class used Excel all day, I really did not enjoy it that  much.
We made fantasy hockey pools with long grueling data imports. But hey I learnt something new!
We imported data from a website, then we also made a selection of 12 players and made our own chart.
We also learned how to use a formula so our 12 player pool, can correlate with the NHL'S 686 player data base.

We had a CPU pop quiz, I did average in the class, But at least I have a reference point now on what I need to study up on. Well I had to draw this one out a bit as we learnt about Excel all morning, We only have half days on Tuesday btw.
As for my night, I studied a bit about some caches, CMOS and flasing the BIOS.

Anyways cya world, and sorry for the boring blog, I'm beat and I feel its unsafe to ingest any more caffeine.
-Mark Bartlett

Mobo reviews

MoBO review                                                                                                           Feb/10/2013

Section 1 Form Factors

ATX

This format was developed by intel to outdo the at factor

Measurements 12”x9.6”

Micro ATX

Backwards compatible with ATX and MICRO ATX cases,

Fewer chassis bays

9.6x9.x6”

ITX

Meant for theatres, or embedded systems.

Compatible with ATX chassis

Section 2 System board components

Bus architecture

- Serial communications  dominate- sustains data rates many times those of parallel connections.

Only downside is the capability of the transceivers.

Types

 SATA- USB, IEEE 1394/FIREwire, peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe)

The term bus is also used in any parallel or bit serial wiring implantation where multiple devices can be attached at the same time in parallel or in series(Daisy chained)

Chipsets

A chipset is a collection of chips or circuits that perfom interface and peripheral functions for the processor. This collection of chips is usually the circuitry that provides interfaces for memory, expansion cards, and onboard peripherals and generally dictates how a motherboard will communicate  with the installed peripherals.

Two major functions of a chipset, North bridge and southbridge

North Bridge

Peripheral boss primarily for communications with intergrated video

The cpuand memory occur over what is known as the frontside bus(FSB)

Backside bus (BSB) if present is responsible for the signal between the cpu and the cache memory

With no BSB the cache is placed on the frontside bus with the cpu and main memory.

Controls the southbridge

SouthBridge

Provides support to the onboard slower peripherals(P.S parallel ports, serial ports, serial and parallel ata, and so on), Unlike NORTHBRIDGE they do not keep up with the external clock of the cpu and do not represent a bottlekneck in the overall performance of the system.

The southbridge is responsible for handing the slower expansion buses

Section 3 Expansion Slots

Expansion Slots

Most visible on a MOBO

Ø  PCI

Ø  AGP

Ø  PCIe

Ø  CNR

PCI EXPANSION SLOTS

PCI EXPANSION buses operate at 33mhz or 66 mhz over a 32 bit (4 byte) channel

Data rates therefore at 133 and 266 mbps 133 mbps most common

Mixing 33 and 66 mhz adapters in a 66 mhz system will slow all adapters to 44mhz

Pci slots and adatpers are manufacture in 3.3 and 5v versions

Notches in the card 5v slots and adatpers oriented toward the front of the mobo

PCI-X expansion SLOT

Visually identical to 64bit PCImost common 133 mhz maximum 533 mhz, 8 byte (64 bit) Bus> maixumum throughput of 4622MBPS roughly 4.3 gbps

PCI-X supports a 266 mhz bus compatible with PCI ADAPTERS

PCI – X  targets server platforms

All adapters falling back to the frequency of the slowest inserted adapter

AGP expansion slots

Accelerated graphics port (AGP)

Mostly for legacy video card use

3d

AGP slots deigsned to be direct connection between the video circuitry and the PCS memory

BROWN slots

AGP X1 uses a 4 byte channel and a 66 mhz clock, results in data rate of 266 mbps

AGP 2X 4x and 8x multiply the 66mhz clock

PCIe Expansion Slots

Backwards compatible

PCIe is usually refered to as the bus architecture to simplify its comparison with other bus tehcnologies

Use switching correspondent bandwith

PciE is a serial technology, striping data packets across multiple serial paths to achieve higher data rates.

PCIE uses the concepts of lanes, which ware switched point to point signal paths between any two pcie components.

Seven different link widths

1x 2x 4x 8x 12x 16x and 32x

1x 4x 16x being most common

16x largest slot

Three major version of PCIE 1x 2x and 3.0

PCIE is compatible with PCI’s best

You can use smaller size cards in a bigger lane slot it will just run at the slower speed

PCIe is gamers choice

SLI on PCIe(two cards)

Perfomarnacne suffers without the proper amount of video cards in the slots

CNR Expansion Slots

Seperates the analog circuitry onto its own card. This allowed analog circuitry  to be separately certified from the already certified digital motherboard.

The communications and networking riser (CNR) slot that can be found on some was devolped after the Audio modem riser (AMR)

These legacy 60 pin slots allowed motherboard manufacturers to implement a motherboard chipset with certain integrated featuires.

A cnr riser card could be added to enhance the onboard capabilities 

CNR has good network support; plug and play compatibility support for hardware acceleration.

Mobo Notes at a glimpse

32 bit(4 Bytes)

64 bit(8byte)

North Bridge- Peripheral Boss- Controls South Bridge

South Bridge- provides support to the onboard slower peripherals

(ATX) advanced techonology extended

Micro Atx

ITX

(PCI) Peripheral component interconnect\

(PCIx)  EXtended

(AGP) Accelerated graphics port(BROWN SLOT)

(PCIe)Peripheral component express

(CNR) Communications and networking riser- 60 pin slots-Network Support

Good night everyone, Hope someone has learned something from this review.
-Mark Bartlett

Week 3 De-Briefing

                                                                                                          Mark Bartlett  Feb/9/2013             

So I took yesterday afternoon off from all duties involving homework :P

Now let me get straight to the points; In the past week we mainly went over how to properly use and format information and budgets in Excel. Now one neat feature I really do quite enjoy about excel is the automated dates function, you can grab the corner of the cell and drag it down or across the grid, and it will fill it in with the correlate with the proper dates. I already had some knowledge of this program so I found it good to review it.

We had a pop quiz each day of the week, except for the WHMIS training day(which I passed) I gradually got better in scores, And I now have a portfolio full of questions that will most Likely be on our quizs in the end :D 

One connector I learnt about this week, that I had no prior knowledge about was the RJ series jacks. RJ-11(Phone jack) and the RJ-45(common internet connector) these two little buggers really do mean quite a bit in the connector world right now, I'm not sure how long they will be around though with technology catapulting it self in advancement.

I also Learnt a bit about DVI and how it has 3 sub categories, Now the differences are some have dual link; The dual link options have 6 more conductors then the single link connections. The extra link also accomodate's higher speeds and signal quality.

One note I have to leave to anyone planning or taking a+....Remember all pins and connectors and speeds of the hardware requirements.
On another note, Today me, a classmate and a network admin are having a meeting with a Agency who had approached me to brainstorm a solution, And well we may have solved the problem! Wish me luck.

-Mark Bartlett

Day 14

So I come to you again, After a long day.         Feb/7/2013

Today we went over our letter of introductions before we got into the good stuff.

After our letters, We got right into video Ram Technology, and the most useful purpose for each type.

As I said a few posts ago, I will now get into one of the programs we are reviewing its called Excel.
Today we Learnt and reviewed creating flow charts, and graph charts, We had to use a table we created in word, and transfer it to excel, and color code the info, then we had made the table into a chart.

We really got a good concept of Excel. As today was a half day, I do not have much else to talk about. Oh yeah we did a pop quiz today on Memory, I did not do too hot, But My memory was not incorrect, I was so confident I raced through it, And answered the opposite of what I should of on a few questions. So all in all the pop quizs are really helping me, and they sure are a eye opener.
Well I end this blog by saying one thing, Information Technology is really grand.

-Mark Bartlett

Day 13

ITTech Journal entry                                                                   Feb/6/2013

So today was a great day, We met one of the stake holders, He really struck me as a brilliant  gentleman.

The man has many plans for the IT structure out here!

Now moving onto what I have learned today.

I will start out with by diving into the RJ( Registered jack) the two most common jacks are RJ-11 and RJ-45 RJ-11 is a phone jack, You will find it in your office or home, The type of cables are called Satin.

The Rj-45 connectors are much larger then the RJ-11 connectors, And more commonly found on the ethernet networks, they use twisted-pair cabling. Majority of NIC(Network Interface Card) have a RJ-45 jack on them. On my final note about RJ's they have a small locking tab on them.

 Moving onto Video Display Cables and Connectors

The DVI Connector offer much higher performance than the original digital standards, Such as CGA and EGA. This connector will appear like a D-SUB connector, but it is very much so different, The number of pins are far greater then the D-SUB connector, and the pins are asymmeterical in their placement on the connector.  I almost forgot to mention the DVI was a jump from Analog connectors to Digital, The reason for this fact is because all adapters and digital display technologies are now dealing with Digital information.

DVI Subcategories

DVI-A DVI-D DVI-I

The DVI-A  and DVI-I connectors come in two different varieties, single link and dual link. The dual link option has more conductors(6 of them to be exact) then a single link, The extra link accomodates higher speeds and signal quality, This additional Link can also be used to increase your resolution from 1920x1080 to 2048x1536 for devices with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

In the end you can just purchase a adapter, because these connectors are pin compatible.

I will end this entry into my Blog by saying this, I can see a bright future for my self in the IT Industry.

-Mark Bartlett

Day12

So day 12 was doing WHMIS for the day, It was fairly straight forward, And tomorrow we get to meet a stake holder in the ITTech program. As today I learned WHMIS I will not be filling you in.

Day 11

Review of today’s lesson                                                             

So today we went over our Resumes’ put them on word if not already, enabled tracking and editing, and emailed them to a friend, Edited/commented. Then we had also sent it back.

We also then went over a letter of introduction; Mine is not too great as I do not have much experience in the Field I will be applying for.

So that was the early morning, Quite straight forward no learning curve at all. We now move onto Integrated Memory Controllers and how it “optimizes info” between the Mobo and the CPU, We did not go over much at all about thte IMC, But we did cover quite a bit about the Integrated GPU, It moved from the GPU adapter to the CPU, saving size energy and costs.

Here are different mountings  PGA/Pin Grid Array And we have LGA/Lang Grid Array (CPU with contacts and the socket on the mobo holds pins) Zif Socket/ Zero Insertion Force socket, chip socket that allows one to insert  a chip without special tools.

Moving on we learnt a bit about Input devices, and what creates a Multimedia device, Such as a Webcamera, It is a microphone and a camera put in one, Therefore Multimedia as it produces more then one type of input media. Now I learnt a quick fact or two today as well, USB has 127 devices and 4 different type of standart port versions, from 1-3.0. Now the sizes also have many variations from a,b,mini a,mini B, uA,Ub; Generally speaking the A port is larger and its meant for the PC, And B port is smaller and meant for the device., The lengths of the usb input devices goes as such, 1.1 – 2.0 5M 3.0 No restriction.

Now Moving onto the more difficult part of the day. Adapter Cards and the Bits and Characters that go along with these aparatus’. These are the 5 main components of the Video Card, Modes Mobo Connection, Circuitry, Video Mmeory and Connections cables.  I wish I could tell you more, But I’m reviewing the notes And the class was so rushed we could not go in too greath depth, I will have to touch base on this again on a later date.

-Mark Bartlett

Projector PowerPoint Slide                             Mark Bartlett                                 Feb/4/2013

Ok ladies and Gents! I present you my latest power point on projector variations.

http://www.slideshare.net/bartlett111021688/projector-power-point-slide

I hope you all enjoy It was made to get familiar even further with the application and give the viewers a idea of different Projector types and variations.

-Mark Bartlett

Day 10(Week 2 DeBriefing)

Week Two De-briefing 

This week's learning curve took a ping for the positive! I learnt quite a bit about hardware, Including DDR ram types and speeds, And how in the future the density will be increasing greatly the bits, For instance take old ECC unbuffered ram, it has 64x8 bit, But Higher density RAM has 64x4 bit, The 4 bit is the higher density. So the point of upgrading your RAM to higher Density DIMM RAM is to increase your processor performace.

Now Lets move onto the MOBO I learnt a bit about the ATX formfactor. This was Intels son of the Baby-AtForm factor, This factor was created to kick the butt of the baby-atFormFactor in many ways, Better I/O interface, current processors  future processor technology advances. This formfactor was put out the masses in 1995.

Lastly I will touch base on UPS(uninterruptible  power supply)

This is a very useful piece of hardware, This baby will instantaneously fire up when you experience a blackout or brownout, And it will run on battery power, On average these will run for a few minutes, before running out of battery power. They used to be mainly used for servers, business' and Government agencies, But now can be found in home based servers etc.

Ok I hope this summary can give everyone a gimpse into the week of my school. We do learn quite a bit more,and right now alot of our learning is involving programs, I may start getting into them as well. 

-Mark Bartlett