Computer Architecture

Well, what to say about this subject.. with no real insight about what could be talked about in this class, I thought I might be a little bored. Especially because the first three or four lessons was basically taken up by the tutor talking and showing us videos on the history of the internet and making us figure out how to convert to and from binary and also hexadecimal(ugh, more maths.. and not even in the maths class)!

But I have to say, I have really enjoyed the last couple of lessons and I reckon I'm going to enjoy the next one few too!

This is because last week, the tutor separated the class into groups of 2-3 and gave us an old tower each, with a keyboard, mouse and a monitor and told us to take the tower to bits as best we could. My team managed to take out all of the components out of the tower - we also managed to fix the power button, which was broken on the computer when we got it!

And today's lesson was actually a lot of fun.. I know, I'm a very very sad man. We were once again split up into groups and told that one of us had to stand outside the classroom, while the other guys changed something inside the tower then came and got the person who was waiting outside and you had to try and spot what was changed.

I think we ended up going around our group of three about two times.. and it was all super good fun! I think my first time the guys had unplugged, unscrewed the hard disk and then flipped it around! Which, thankfully I spotted right away and fixed it quick smart, well not so quickly really.. cause it takes forever to screw in a hard disk!! It was a really cool way of encouraging us to get involved with our team mates and helping us learn the ins and outs of the innards of a computer.

I'm really looking forwards to next week's lesson in Computer Architecture as we will be attempting to set up a basic peer to peer network with our test machines!

Bring it!