My thirst for knowledge...

[Fallen Phoenix]

Wow, I get back into the computer thing and there's so much that has changed! I just gotta learn all I can, it's addictive:cool:
I got a few kinda newb questions for all you guys n' gals.

---- can someone explain the Northbridge Southbridge thing to me?

---- SATA, IDE, SCSI, EIDE, FIREWIRE... what's all this mean? I'm familiar with IDE and EIDE though I'm not sure what the difference is. SCSI I know is fast but that's about it, same with FIREWIRE. SATA, I've got no idea.

---- is this (http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4C800%20Deluxe&langs=01) a good motherboard? I want to get something nice for myself for college and this looks good.

I guess that's it for now, thanks in advance I know they're newb questions but it's just so much fun learning about computers and how they work.

p.s. Has anyone ever seen a book called 'upgrading and repairing PCs"? I've got one from like 1994 and it looks like it's good but so much has changed from back then it's pretty useless.

[Angry_Games]

NB = link between CPU and RAM

SB = link between IDE/SATA/PCI/Audio/USB and CPU

SATA = Serial ATA. Your reg IDE drives run now in PATA, or Parallel ATA, the old standard. SATA is an independent bus that allows for transfer rates of 150MB/s any maybe beyond in the future. Its a single drive channel, but the cables can be longer, and someone else can probably explain better than me =)

As for the ASUS board, I have heard good things about it, but do not personally own one.

As for learning again, I suggest you just browse sites like OC (here!), Anandtech, Tweaktown, etc. Use google to put a search in like: how to build upgrade computer

and you should get a lot of hits back. I know theres a lot of places that explain a lot of stuff and show you with pics/vids of how to do everything.

[ninthebin]

The internals of a system no matter through your physical arrangement of drives or whatnot are all based on a hierarchy of buses, theses two chips are major hubs within this hierarchy. The Northbridge or MCH is involved with the upper end of the hierarchy were all the larger, faster buses are concerned - such as the CPU, Memory, AGP and then finally connected to the southbridge through the PCI bus. The Southbridge will then inturn control all the lower speed, smaller buses - these may include things like PCI, USB, IDE, infact most of the things you ask of in your second question.

AGP------CPU
AGP-------|
AGP------NB-------MEMORY
AGP-------|
AGP-------|
PCI-------SB------IDE

that is a very general architecture, there are lot more components involved - im sure if you look around on various chipset manufacturers websites you will find a proper diagram depicting this.

SATA - I would describe this as a major revision of the older PATA standard, it offers faster drives, thinner cables, lower power usage, although the early drives may not show a massive improvement over current PATA drives (if any) the transfer speeds are set to rise significantly.

IDE - this is an interface between various storage devices that as far as I know just connects straight into the SB without any controller, the controllers are held on the drives themselves.

EIDE - this offers upto two devices per cable.

SCSI - This allows you to have many more drives than that of an IDE or EIDE bus, upto 8 including the host adapter, I doubt there is any reason that the SCSI drives themselves are that much better than ATA but the fact ATA drives are made to be cheap consumer end drives, and SCSI is were the they want to have the upper end performance.

Firewire - this is basically a USB alternative which in its latest 1394b carnation puts it faster than USB2.0 by quite a bit.

The motherboard is good, but the only thing that the canterwood holds over the springdale is the PAT, which as far as I know you can enable on the P4P800 - whether the P4P800 in general offers less features than the P4C800 you would probably want to check on ASUSs site for, also I remember hearing of the PAT enabling on springdale chipsets being stopped so you would probably want to search the forums about it, find nothing start a thread for it or something.

On matter of the book, I would honestly say your much better where you are...the internet...computer books in particular are generally very out of date with technologies, and give very basic information on what various things within the pc do. You would probably be best finding a couple of really good sites on the matter and read from there - and stick to enthusiast communities such as this one.

hope this helped :santa2:

[Fallen Phoenix]

Thanks both of you for the great info! I'm guessing IDE is pretty much obsolete and no longer used? I'll check out ASUS's site to see which would be better for me. Thanks again! And if you think of anything else that I might need to know please post it lol I love this stuff :D

[Angry_Games]

IDE is going the way of the floppy, but like the floppy (and cd), it will be around for a long time as it goes from being current to being a 'legacy' device.

but new things are becoming the norm, like USB memory sticks taht act as a 'hard drive'. Some BIOS's now allow you to boot to them, and they are faster and more reliable than a floppy, and hold up to 256MB or more (we have a 64MB one).

probably more as I think of them =)

[Fallen Phoenix]

What you said about booting from the USB device made me think of something. Why isn't there a firmware OS?!?!? Boot times are ridicilous (spelling sucks tonight) when you think of the possibilities. I guess Billy boy wouldn't go for that though. It would be advantageous to him though since it would be a lot harder to copy a firmware Windoze than a simple CD.