More Week 2 Reading Notes M. Farina

Week 2 more Reading notes:

Computer History Museum
The online computer museum kept me entertained for about two hours! I had the most fun at the Timeline of Computer History exhibit. If you would like a good laugh, click on 1972 and scroll down to the Pong game. I had that! I won it as a prize at school, around 1979! The next trip down memory lane comes in the year 1978, the Speak and Spell. There was another Texas Instruments handheld educational game called Little Professor, which my brother and I played endlessly and learned all of our math facts! Since we aren’t supposed to write a summary of the reading (site) I will just end by saying that the online exhibits of The Computer History Museum are all very informative and entertaining. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the archives of advertising brochures for personal computers, do it ~ you’ll get some good laughs!

Personal Computer Hardware
I’ll give myself a grade of C for my knowledge of these terms. Although I knew many of them, I’ve got a ways to go. BIOS, north ridge, PCI, SATA and some others are parts of the motherboard that are new to me. I’m also lacking in my knowledge of secondary storage ideas and vocabulary. The information on this site, along with my Discovering Computers book, are a big help to me though (and a way to even out the playing field in our class.)

Moore’s Law
Wow! I think I had heard the term, “Moore’s Law” before but hadn’t grasped its concept. Now, I seem to have an idea of it, but I can’t necessarily explain it clearly to someone. Let me just make sure I have this right: The number of transistors that can fit on a chip(?) doubles each year. This trend has been going on for the past forty years and is expected to end around 2015 or so. The video did a great job of explaining in layman’s terms along with visual aides – my kind of teaching!
There was mention of the law unfolding as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, I’m not so sure I buy into that idea. Working toward the goal of exactly doubling the number of transistors, would mean that scientists ‘stopped’ themselves from advancing further at times just to fulfill the prophecy. Hmmmm?

Michele Farina