January 31st, 2013

Today I learned about IRQs, DMA Channels and I/O Addresses. An IRQ (interrupt request line) is a hardware line which devices can send interrupt signals to the microprocessor, DMA (direct memory access) channels are used for transferring data from main memory to a device without passing it through the CPU, and an I/O channel is a 3 digit hexadecimal number used to identify and signal a peripheral device. There's a lot of values and codes related to these things. We also learned a bit about cooling systems, which I definitely want to learn more about. My last laptop came with a very poor fan, and I believe the many problems it had were due to overheating.