various memories

[PeteSchiffer]

I'm not interested in getting too technical here.

There are bits of assorted memory attached to sound and video cards, right?
And there's L1 and L2 cache.
I think this kind of memory works together with RAM and the processor and serves to speed up operations. It's volatile, and either SRAM or VRAM.

There's the BIOS ROM and part of the CMOS?
I'm not sure if there's any memory related to the clock.
It's my understanding that this kind of memory is non-volatile ROM and has to do with the basic funcion of the machine. Is this firmware?

If this kind of general idea is along the right lines, the question is: Is there any more of the first kind of memory I haven't listed, and of course, are there any other bits of the second kind of memory on the board?

Thanks,

Pete

[mjc]

Hard drives and CD-RW...they have buffers...upto a few MBs.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[pentachris]

To answer the other question ("Is this firmware?"), firmware is kind of like a driver located in a device. Drivers tell windows how to talk to a device (write this data to disk). Firmware is stored in memory in the device itself, and governs how the device operates (to write this data to disk, I need to spin the motor, move the write head to the disc, etc).

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Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

[PeteSchiffer]

Thanks for your replies, thanks indeed.

So, would a hard drive have both a firmware chip )to retain the device settings) and a another chip, possibly SRAM, to act as the buffer?

Pete

[mjc]

Yep...most drives have both a ROM (usually a flashable variety) and aoms variety of RAM.......

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.