KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
College of Business Administration
Administrative Sciences 34045
"Small Systems Technology"
INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Geoffry S. Howard
TERM: Intersession, 1998, 9:00 - 12:00 M - F, 208 BSAOFFICE: A427 Business Administration
PHONE: 672-2750 x342 EMAIL: ghoward@kent.eduCALL NUMBER: 10040
E-MAIL: If you don’t have an e-mail address, sign up in class on the list that is sent around and I’ll get one established for you. If you don't know how to use the e-mail, I have a handout. You're strongly encouraged to use e-mail to reach me. Not that you're not welcome to come to the campus office, but the E-Mail makes it possible to get help without waiting for office hours. Also, the whole world is beginning to work using the time-displacement and place-displacement advantages of electronic networking. You need to get comfortable with this.
OFFICE HOURS: Before and after class, Monday - Friday
COURSE MATERIALS:
TEXT: Andrews, Jean; A Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC (Introductory), Cambridge, Massachusetts: Course Technology Publishing, ISBN 0-7600-5073-2. Available at DuBois and on campus.
SOFTWARE: Nuts and Bolts CD - Bundled with the above text.
COURSE CONCEPT: This is a highly technically-oriented course that is designed to equip you to be a "PC support" person in your workplace. The course does NOT presuppose in-depth knowledge of computers, but you do need to have a knack for technical detail or scientific kinds of course material. The goal is for you to learn enough to be able to intelligently guide your organization in selecting PC hardware and software, to be able to install PCs and PC components, and to do relatively comprehensive support of PCs in the workplace, including technical troubleshooting.
The rationale for the emphasis on PC support is that small computers have found their way into essentially all workplaces, from art museums to the factory floor. There are very few career areas and organizations that are not heavily dependent on small computers for significant aspects of their every day activity. Yet there is an extreme scarcity of "experts" who have enough in depth conceptual and practical knowledge of how PCs work to be able to keep them all working, upgraded, supported, and managed properly in the workplace. There are far too many people in the workplace who know enough about PCs to be, literally, dangerous. This course will prepare you to fulfill a PC support role with complete competence. If you are an IS major, you could conceivably build an entire career around technical support of small computers, as there is currently very high demand for entry-level people with PC skills, and a scarce supply.
MAC DISCLAIMER: Nearly the entire course is devoted to IBM PC clones -- Apple systems are not covered except tangentially in the text. This is a reflection of the current instability of the Apple Corporation and of the fact that IBMs have penetrated much more deeply into the commercial workplace than Apples. Also, there is barely enough time in the term to cover IBM adequately, much less a second totally different system. In addition, the IBM and Apple paradigms are converging, and training in the IBM world will be increasingly transferable to MacIntosh systems.
READINGS: The Course Schedule lists all reading assignments, which include chapters from the texts and possibly some WWW sites. You will benefit the most from these if you read them prior to the day they appear in the schedule, as the topics of the readings are carefully selected to correlate with each day's material.
TESTS: Objective, take home tests. Tests will not be comprehensive -- each test will cover the material since the last test, excluding the material for the day on which the test is given.
REVIEW QUESTIONS: Each person (not group) will prepare end-of-chapter review questions, as specified in the Course Schedule. These can be hand-written and will be graded on a pass-fail basis.
FINAL: The final exam will be in a take home format. The questions will be based on the list of Course Objectives at the end of the syllabus.
PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENTS: Hands-on learning is more fun and helps to cement the concepts and procedures you learn in the readings and in the classroom. You will do several lab assignments, ranging from disassembling and assembling a computer and installing the operating system to finding and correcting fairly esoteric configuration errors and viruses. Details on these are in the text at the ends of the chapters. Each group will turn on handwritten notes on each lab assignment, which will be credited pass/fail.
CHEATING: Cheating of any kind will result in a grade of zero on the test, assignment, or quiz in question. Duplicate projects or other types of out-of-class work from multiple groups will be considered cheating and all members of all groups involved will receive zeros. A second offense of cheating of any kind will result in receipt of an "F" in the course. Violations will be treated using the procedures in the KSU Student Handbook, Section 3342-07.
GRADING: Here is a proposed grading scheme. We will negotiate the details of this in class.
| Tests | Six take-home tests | 35% |
| Handwritten Chapter Review Questions | 20% | |
| Practical Assignments | Reported via handwritten lab notes | 30% |
| Final Exam | 15% |
COURSE OBJECTIVES
1. Be able to identify all the components of a typical IBM-compatible PC and to assemble a system from those components. Know the various varieties of components available such as hard drive heights and sizes, memory module configurations, case sizes, power supply options, and others, and understand the distinctions among them.
2. Be able to describe the classical boot and Power On Self Test (POST) process in detail. Understand how it is possible to boot a system from a floppy disk only. Extend this with an understanding of what happens when Windows 95 starts.
3. Know which files, as a minimum, must be present on a disk in order for the boot process to function correctly, and know how to create a floppy "boot disk" for the DOS and the Windows 95 environments.
4. Understand the basic principles of PC internal operation including memory addressing, busses, microprocessor sub-systems, register structure, secondary storage, ROM BIOS, the concept of interrupts and the interrupt vector, the PC ASCII character set, and the sequence and timing of instruction execution.
5. Be able to install operating systems such as Windows 95, DOS, Windows 3.1, OS/2, and DOS on a newly formatted or partitioned hard drive.
6. Be adept at customizing the Windows 95 desktop configuration.
7. Know the role of the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files in establishing system configurations on DOS computers and how to use MSD and other diagnostics such as The Norton Utilities to be able to assess those configurations.
8. Know how to alter CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to achieve various desired system configurations on DOS bootup.
9. Contrast basic DOS startup with an understanding of how Windows 95 is started, the role of all the various Windows configuration files and the Registry, how they are updated automatically by certain software setup routines, and how they can be modified manually. Understand how to edit the "Registry" in Windows 95 operation and how to backup and restore the registry.
10. Be able to describe the relationship between DOS and Windows ’95.
11. Know how to install common software applications for Windows, such as Microsoft Word.
12. Understand the conceptual differences among conventional, expanded, and extended memory in DOS machines, how to determine how much of each is present in a particular machine configuration, and how and why to alter it. Know what drivers and other support are required to support DOS expanded and extended memory and disk caches.
13. Understand how to assess and manage memory under Windows 95.
14. Understand the various physical configurations of memory chips and chip modules and how to add them to an existing PC.
15. Be able to explain what a TSR is, why it is necessary, how it differs from a device driver, how to determine where in memory a TSR is loaded, and how to change the load location of a TSR.
16. Be able to explain what a device driver is, why it is necessary, how it differs from a TSR, how to determine where in memory a device driver is loaded, and how to change the load location of a device driver.
17. Understand the physical principles that underlie the operation of disk drives, including flying height, the boundary layer, and magnetic hysteresis.
18. Understand the concept of partitions on hard drives and how to alter them.
19. Be able to explain the layout of data on a hard disk, the role of the FAT, the functioning of a cluster, and exactly what happens in high-level and low-level formatting processes. Know why it is necessary and how to perform a low-level and a high-level format of a hard disk.
20. Know how to determine the degree of fragmentation of a hard disk, the impact of fragmentation on performance, and how to defragment it.
21. Explain how to manage backups, the concept of generation data sets, and how to use popular software to perform backups to disk and tape.
22. Be able to install and correctly configure a second floppy drive, a CD ROM drive, a network adapter and accompanying support files, or a FAX MODEM into a PC.
23. Be able to describe and control how Windows 95 manages devices under the "Plug and Play" paradigm.
24. Show an understanding of why a MODEM is necessary in order for PCs to communicate over telephone networks.
25. Be able to describe the kinds of information available on services such as Prodigy and CompuServe, the Internet generally, and the World Wide Web, with special emphasis on the support available through these services for PC products.
26. Know how to configure Windows 95 to support communication functions such as FAX and Hyperterminal.
27. Understand the principles of operation of CD ROM drives and the general types of resources available on CD media.
28. Explain the evolution of video standards such as CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA and others.
29. Be able to show how CRT devices form characters and graphics, the role of video driver cards, the various video modes available, and how to change those modes on a PC.
30. Understand the principles of operation of serial and parallel ports, how they can be configured from DOS or within Windows, and the protocols and signal lines used in each.
31. Be able to explain the basic principles of how a mouse or trackball works.
32. Demonstrate an ability to install mouse hardware and software.
33. Explain in general how a laser printer, an ink jet printer, and an impact printer works. Be able to compare the capabilities, limitations, and costs of the above.
34. Explain printer standards such as PostScript, relate how font files and font cartridges work, and discuss in general terms how printers are controlled by software.
35. Know how to use LapLink, Interlink, or Windows 95 "Dialup Networking" utilities to quickly transfer files between computers.
36. Show an ability to diagnose PC hardware and software problems and make corrections.
37. Be able to explain the primary varieties of computer viruses, describe how they propagate, and show how to detect and remove them.