Author: Peter Saxon

Computers are very simple devices and are made of only three things:
Hardware, Software and Firmware.

Hardware

If you go to a hardware store (Ferramenta in Italy) you will notice that the shelves are full of: screws, nuts, bolts, hose pipes, glue and sandpaper etc.
this is hard wares or hardware. A computer is a box full of hardware, but thanks to a miracle of technology the hardware is miniaturized and packed into very small oblong boxes called integrated circuits (IC’s). These IC’s are further packed into things called Microprocessors.

Software

Another shop you might visit is a sofa shop, here you will find all types of soft wares: Sofa’s armchairs cushions mattresses ( madrac ) etc. this is software. Of course a shop full of mattresses would never fit on a CD or floppy disc.
But as you may know, if you remove all the air out of your soft wares you can pack it into a fraction of the space. If you then remove the spaces, a technique called zipping you will have “zipped” software.
This zipped software of course would not work, it would “crash”, so before it is used, “spaces” have to be put back in. Now the software will work, but only for a short time, because after some time it will run out of spaces and crash into a mattress again.
Microsoft have come up with a solution to this problem, it is called a dynamic update, every few days when your software gets low on spaces, microsoft send more spaces so your computer can keep going.

Firmware

Between the hardware shop and the software shop in my town is a Fish & Chip shop. Fish and Chip shops sell deep fried fish and chipped potatoes wrapped in old newspaper. Computer firmware is the same, it is between hardware and software, but instead of on a CD or floppy disc the mattresses are deep fried into chips.

Microprocessor

Have you noticed that goats will eat anything, shirts, cushions, even mattresses, they bite off small bits and swallow them one by one. A processor is the same, the sofa’s and mattresses are chopped into bite sized pieces or bytes.
Now the goat can eat the sofa easily.
A goat that can swallow 3 bits of mattress twice a second is a 2 bit 3 hertz goat.
A goat that can swallow 32 bits of mattress 500,000 times a second is a 32Bit 0.5MHz goat.
32Bit = size of goats mouth.
0.5MHz = mouthful per second.

Hard Drive

I know, Hertz – Hard Drive, we all tend to drive hire cars a little hard, and the roads in America are perfect for rental cars:

Freeway – You have to pay to use the Freeway.
Parkway – You cannot park on a Parkway.
Driveway – You park on a driveway.

Your goat parks its sofa’s and mattresses on it Hard Drive.

RAM (Ovan)

All goats need Rams, a good ram will anticipate the goats needs, and have the needed mattress ready for action.