How do a computer’s hardware and software actually connect?
In: Technology
1/0 on a computer is represented by wires that are *on* or *off*.
When you switch off the light in your bedroom, you are kind of like “giving a command to turn dark” to the lamp, but the lamp doesn’t need to understand English to achieve that, because everything is expressed in terms of “on” and “off”.
A screen pixel is kind of like a lamp that can be switchen on or off and a keyboard-key is kind of like a switch that can open or close a circuit.
The piece of hardware that does addition in a computer is made just so, that it produces a pattern on it’s outgoing wires that represent a number that is the sum of the patterns on the incoming wires. It has 2 times 64 wires (+1 carry) going in and 64 wires (+1 carry) going out.
A program is a list of instructions and every instruction switches on a different path in the computers circuitry.
– Connect memory cell 402 and 742 to the adder and connect the result to memory cell 467!
– cell 239 and 198 to divider, result to cell 811.
– cell 811 and 467 to subtraction, result to 811.
– …
Some of those memory addresses are determined by input devices, some addresses are used for output devices, like screen and speakers.
Latest Answers