A few years ago, graduates from our department raised concerns that they had never seen the inside of a computer nor had they installed an operating system such as Windows or Linux. This has changed, and much of the change has occurred in this class, CSCI 2150. This lab is the first of ten or eleven that introduce the student to the basics of PC installation, maintenance, and troubleshooting.
For many students in computer science, PC hardware and operating system installation is trivial. Either through requirements at their job, a desperate need to repair a home PC, or a passionate computer hobby, a number of people have learned to upgrade, maintain, and troubleshoot computers. If you are in this group, then this and many of the other labs based on the PC will seem trivial. The key is to make sure that everyone has achieved a certain level of competency when it comes to the systems they will be working with in future CSCI course and in their careers. If you feel that the repair and configuration of PCs is a trivial exercise, be sure to help those in the lab who are new to the concepts.
So as a CSCI student, what do you need to learn about the PC? Since each of you will be using the computer in different ways once you graduate, no one can really say. The way this class looks at it is that you should be able to make any of the upgrades or repairs commonly needed on a desktop machine. This includes troubleshooting problems, swapping defective parts, improving the computer's resources such as memory or drive capacities, or repairing or upgrading software including the operating system.
The first topic to tackle is to understand the configuration of the computer's hardware. Improper configuration can lead to problems such as boot failure or inaccessible resources. This lab provides a step-by-step procedure to introduce you to the system configuration.
If you miss the day we do this lab in class or if you would like to do the lab over again, you are more than welcome to come in during open lab hours to repeat the lab on your own.
Since this lab involves coming in contact with the internal circuitry of the computer, we need to talk about static electricity. It is not a question of whether static electricity will damage components, it always does. Sometimes, it may take a day or two or even a month for the damage to appear, but eventually the computer will begin to have random failures and then finally the damaged component will fail. A major goal of opening a computer case up for upgrade or repair is to not have to open it up again later for an additional repair.
You cannot predict when static electricity will occur. Yes, static electricity is worse when conditions are dry, but do not depend on that. Simply standing up or using cellophane tape could create enough charge to damage some electronics. That small spark jumping from the back of your hand to your hard drive can turn the drive into a door stop...a $60 door stop.
To avoid damaging components with static electricity, always, always, always touch a metal part of the computer's case or some other large piece of metal to ground yourself before coming close to any exposed electronic components.
The lab is also equipped with wrist straps that you can wear to safely ground yourself without restricting your movement. There are two parts to a wrist strap: an elastic wrist band and a coiled wire. Simply attach the alligator clip at the end of the coiled wire to the computer's chassis and attach the end of the wire with the snap to the snap on the wrist band. As long as the user is wearing this wrist band properly, he or she is statically discharged.
Anti-Static Wrist Strap
Improved mobility is only one benefit of the wrist strap. Each wrist strap contains a fuse that acts as a protection to the user in case the metal clip touches a high voltage source. Instead of shocking the user, the fuse blows and disconnects the user from the wire. Unfortunately, once this fuse blows, the wrist strap is no good and must be discarded. It is good practice to check the fuse in each wrist strap on a regular basis. This is done with an Ohmmeter, a device which checks to see if there is an electrical connection between two points.
If you or your lab partner are found not following anti-static procedures during any portion of a lab where electronics are exposed, you will automatically forfeit 10% (one letter grade) of your lab quiz grade.
This lab will introduce you to the operation of the computer's BIOS and the configuration of the computer's hardware. During the lab, you will:
You will be using some of the procedures shown in this lab in future labs, so it is important to understand them now.
First, let's look at the mother board. (Note: The term mother board may be interchanged with the term system board.) We will begin by removing the cover.
The design of the Dell computers in our lab facilitates the quick removal of the components. Because of the wear these systems receive from constant disassembly and reassembly, removal of some components may have become more difficult with time, but you shouldn't have to force anything. Our lab PCs are tower machines that require being laid on their sides for easier access to the components. All of the instructions here assume that the machine is already on its side.
In
the past, the power supplies needed to be removed in order to gain access
to the mother board. In the GX280's that we are using now, the power supply
is small enough that this is unnecessary. If, however, you should need to
remove one for replacement, unplug the machine, remove the two screws holding the supply
in the case, press the green tab where the supply rests on the case, and slip
the supply up and out. This is shown in the figure to the right. (Source:
Dell Documentation -- Higher Education, "Dell™
OptiPlex™ GX240 Service Manual")
In the old days, the majority of a computer's configuration, everything from the amount of memory installed to the number of communication ports, was configured with a device known as a jumper. Now everything is configured using the boot configuration screen which we will discuss in the next section. There is still one thing that we need to configure with a jumper.
A jumper, the blue block in the figure below, is used to straddle two pins on a circuit board to create a "short circuit" or electrical connection. The outside of the jumper is plastic, but a metal strip inside of the plastic is what connects the two pins.
These electrical connections between certain pins can be used to configure some of the most basic settings of the mother board. In earlier generations of mother boards for example, if the processor was changed, the mother board must alter the clock frequency that drives that processor. There were jumpers on the mother board to do that.
The only jumper still on today's mother boards is a jumper that disables the BIOS password, the password that is required to configure the PC. If the user forgets the password used to configure the PC, then the configuration will never be able to be altered again. This jumper allows the password to be reset or disabled.
Looking down on the top of your mother board (the dark green board that is mounted to the bottom of the case you've just opened), you should a bundle of colored wires going into a plug toward the front of the board near the power supply. Next to this bundle of wires you should see a small jumper, typically black or green. If this jumper is connected, the password feature can be enable. If the jumper is disconnected, the password feature is disabled.
Next, we want to examine the hardware that is set up for your particular PC. The reason we will be doing this is to verify the system settings when we power up the machine. You may use the figure below as a reference in order to identify your machine's components. (Source: Dell™ OptiPlex™ GX280 Quick Reference Guide)
Some machines use IDE cables to connect to hard drives too. A single IDE connection can connect two IDE devices to the mother board. Before the advent of SATA (described in the next step), a mother board typically had two IDE connections allowing for a total of four IDE devices to be connected.
SATA replaces the IDE cable as a connection to storage devices such as hard drives and CDROMs. (ATA, by the way, stands for Advanced Technology Attachment.) The serial connection allows for higher data rates and hot swapping (connecting or disconnecting with power on) and a thinner cable provides a more reliable connection and better cooling by not having the wider IDE cable blocking air flow.
Now you should have enough information about the computer to verify that it was configured properly in the system setup.
Note, your opportunity to successfully perform step 16 depends on you being able to quickly respond to your system prompt after power up. Therefore, read steps 15 and 16 before you do proceed.
After steps 15 and 16, the computer should respond by placing the message "Entering Setup" in the upper right corner of the screen.
After a moment, the system setup screen will be displayed. This is where we will be verifying the hardware configuration we examined in steps 7 through 11 in addition to examining how the system has been configured.
The system setup screen functions much like the folder/file tree in Microsoft's Windows Explorer with a menu tree in the left pane and the details of the selected item in the right pane. There is no mouse support, however. All commands must be executed through the keyboard. In setup you have access to configuration items such as:
At the bottom of the setup screen, you should see a list of commands you can use to modify the configurable items, move the cursor, etc. For example, ENTER is sued to expand or collapse items in the menu tree. (The left and right arrows can also be used to do this.) The up and down keys can be used to move from one item to the next. To begin with, we will be using setup to examine the current settings of the machine.
The boot sequence defines the order in which the computer examines devices looking for an operating system to boot. Options for where an operating system might be found include:
In this class, we want the devices to be checked in the order: floppy, CDROM, hard drive, then network. Use the following steps to ensure this order in your lab computer.
Once you have completed the changes in the boot sequence, save the configuration and exit. Once you have exited, the machine should automatically reboot. If your computer does not reboot, examine the possible reasons in the next section of this document.
Due to the number of components it takes to run a PC, there are a number of reasons why it might not come up. There is no substitute for experience. Once you've put a bunch of computer systems together, you'll know what to look for. In the absence of experience, however, there are a couple of things you can check first.
If your computer emits multiple beeps during its POST, your manufacturer's documentation should be able to help you to diagnose the problem. I was able to find the following description of beep codes for our machines on the Dell web site.
The description of Dell beep codes usually takes the form of three single digit numbers, e.g., 3-2-4. This is because the Dell beep codes come in groups of three bursts. For example, 3-2-4 means that the series of beeps will be a burst of three beeps followed by a a burst of two beeps followed by a burst of four beeps
In an effort to make sure that your computer is capable of using the latest technology and to ensure its stable operation, we need to verify that the most basic code that the computer uses is up-to-date. The main component behind accessing the devices on a computer is called the Basic Input Output System (BIOS)
As will be explained in the lab on operating system installation, the BIOS is necessary to give the processor the rudimentary code in order to bring up the computer. It performs simple functions like testing the hardware (including memory), initializing hardware such as USB or printer ports, and creating the basic interface to storage devices such as the hard drives.
To put it in plain English, the operating system that is stored on the hard drive is completely useless unless the processor knows how to communicate with the hard drive in the first place. The operating system cannot handle the hard drive interface because the processor needs this interface before it can get anything from the hard drive, namely the operating system.
There are some reasons why a BIOS might need updating. These include but are not limited to:
Therefore, the next step in this lab is to verify that the latest BIOS has been loaded on your computer.
The latest BIOS for your computer should be available from the manufacturer's web site. In the case of the computers in the lab, the new BIOS's were downloaded in the form of an executable file from the Dell web site. You should have downloaded the executable GX280A08.EXE before coming to lab. It is small enough to fit on a floppy disk, but you can also store it to a thumb drive. This is not the BIOS, rather it is a program that will run on Windows and update the BIOS with new code. Using this file and the following process, you should be able to update the BIOS on the Dell machines in the lab. Note that you will need to leave the CSCI lab's hard drive in the machine in order to complete this part of the lab.
Dell gives the following standard warning about installing a new BIOS: "NOTICE: Changing the system BIOS may result in unintended side affects, such as incompatibility of the new BIOS with installed hardware. If problems arise after a BIOS change, it may be necessary to return the system to the original version of the BIOS." This procedure has been tried on all of the machines in the lab without any ill effects.
From either Windows Explorer or the run menu item
in the Start menu, execute the program that you just copied to the hard drive.
(The program's icon should look like that shown to the right.) Dell warns that if a
Security Warning window appears, you should simply click "Yes".
After executing the program, the following window should be displayed:
If the process went correctly, the computer should reboot with the new of the BIOS installed. After the machine has successfully rebooted, reboot for a second time and go into setup to verify that the BIOS has updated to the new version. Then shutdown the computer and turn off the monitor to complete the lab.
Developed by David Tarnoff for students in CSCI 2150 at ETSU