I’m very interested in learning how computers work, but can’t seem to find the exact information I’m looking for. My understanding is, and **please** correct me if I’m wrong, is that if you press the letter “A” on a keyboard, a circuit underneath will close which sends electricity to wires, and based on the combination of voltages on the wires, the computer outputs an “A”. But how does the computer know what do to with voltages? What do the voltages represent? At what point does any of this information get converted into binary, and once it does, what happens?
I don’t expect someone to be able to explain this like I’m five. For me, it’s a difficult, but really interesting subject. Any clarification and dumbing down is appreciated! I’m really hoping to get a better grasp on my understanding of all this.
Edit: I should’ve made the title “How do computers work?” Still wondering how computers know what to do with 1’s and 0’s, though.
In: 0
It’s good that you are aware that it is all just voltages. A lot of people think there are actual 1 and 0s going through the wires!
Let’s look at this the other way. When you press A on the keyboard, nothing really means anything until you see it on the screen. How did it get there? Well as you are probably aware the image on the screen is made up of lots of little lights, which turn on and off to make the image you see. Voltages are sent from the video card thru the cable and the monitor says… ah ha! I am getting voltage changes! And this pattern of voltages means to turn on these lights… and you see the “A” now this happens so fast because there is voltage patterns sent for every little light (millions of them) and for which color… and it does this 60 time per second or faster.
It is literally voltages all the way down until a photon is generated from the monitor lights and hits your eye.
Now you would ask how did the video card know what voltages to send? It’s really just another series of voltages that were sent to the video card from the cpu and memory.
When you pressed A there is something called an interrupt, which interrupts the cpu from what it is doing and it says… a ha! New voltages received and I see this pattern… that means I need to stop what I’m doing and handle this voltage. The software sees tge voltage and responds. The software you are running really doesn’t matter, whether it’s notepad or Gmail it’s all just voltages in memory and there is a back and forth dance between the cpu and the memory. Some of these dance moves calculate stuff, and some send info to the video card.
Clear as mud?
Latest Answers