So tell me in simple language

[Capn Notarious]

How the USB memory drive sticks, that are inserted into the pooter,WORK

[Irish Steve]

USB is a communications protocol, so the computer knows how to get information in and out of the device. In the device, there's a chip or 3 that hold data, and between the data chip and the communications chip there's another clever little gizmo that works out where the information has to be put, or where it's to be got from, based on information that is coming in from the puter on the communications link.

The rest of it is down to the "smoke and mirrors" department, otherwise known as software drivers, which is what sorts out the where and how of getting the data in and out of the device.

While it's called a drive, it's got no moving parts, unlike a real drive, the data is stored in a chip that doesn't lose it's memory in the same way as the puter when it's turned off.

is that enough?

[FunkyMunky]

Also, on the software side of things, most USB drive devices will conform to the USB Mass Storage Device standards, a set of generic drivers contained within the newer operating systems that provide a "standard" for removable disk drives to operate seamlessly with.


The flash memory itself consists of a grid of cells with transistors similiar to standard MOSFETs at each juncture. Two transistors are seperated by a thin layer of oxide. When the transistors are linked, the cell has a binary value of "1". A process called "Fowler-Nordheim tunneling" allows this value to be changed to "0", if need be, by supplying a voltage to the floating gate of the cell. This excites electrons to the other side of the oxide layer, where they are trapped. They act as a barrier and a cell sensor measures the charge across the floating gate. When the charge flowing through the gate is >50% of the total charge, the value will be "1". <50%, the value becomes "0". This allows data to be stored in binary form on flash-based memory devices.

[Avtrician]

Tis all done by Magic, The electric computer fairies know when its plugged in and what to do with it.

When it stops working, all the fairies have died, so you have to get a new one.:8

[Jerricho]

When it stops working, all the fairies have died, so you have to get a new one

I would love to hear you explain how helicopters work ;)

[Flying Mushroom]

Ahhh... Jellycopters

That's simple and not in the work descriptions act of fairies - Jellycopters work with pixie dust! :D

Thats why the rotor musn't overspeed, as all the pixie dust gets blown off and then they stop working.

Hope this helps ;)

[Avtrician]

Quite simple really, the rotating blades beat the air into submision, and makes lots of noise. Helicopters dont like noise so run away,there fore it flys.

Aeroplanes fly when the paperwork equals or is greater than the weight of the plane. All the Kero is used to make large amounts of noise. Planes dont like noise so run away. The more noise made, the faster it runs away.

Next question.

[RiskyRossco]

Dinosaurs are thin at one end, much MUCH thicker in the middle. . .

Oops, pardonnay-mwah, thort it was nuvver thread.

On the topic of wokka-wokkas there was a story presented that the earth thinks wokkas are too ugly for words, therefore repels them. Ergo: lift.

Pooters, on t'other hand, are divided into two categories: those that have crashed and those that are going to crash.

USB is all elcktrickery. And, unless we've been bottle-fed on foot-thick pooter manuals, ignored all entreaties by a despairing mother to "go outside and PLAY!", spent hours in the gloom staring at some VDU, typing code, hacking, dabbling in the arcane universe of bits, bytes, meg, gig, GUIs, CDRom/RW, floppies, motherboards (one would've thunk that had promising overtones - it does, if you're the Terminator), ports, I/O, system errors, sims, PS2/XBox, RPGs and eventually wind up with a nose ring . . . we'll never know and. . .we're n-o-t s-p-o-s-e-d t-o- a-s-k.

I do not, of course, apply this epithet to all whizzy-do pooter-hoons. . . only the fringe element who revelled in the 'early days'. .

:O

[ZH875]

Computers and other electric/electronic devices run on smoke.

Each device has a certain finite amount of smoke inside.

When you release the smoke, the device stops working. :ok: