CHAPTER –2

COMPUTER HARDWARE

INTRODUCTION

In order to use a computer effectively, one must understand the fundamentals of underlying
technology and the components that go inside in making a complete computer system unit.
Hardware is the tangible part in a computer system. This in turn includes various parts that we
can see and touch. It is the electronic circuitry that permits a computer to perform some task.
Users make use of input and output devices to interact with the computers. Input devices help in
entering data into the computer for processing, while output devices helps in transferring
processed data or information to devices that permit it to be seen as text or graph, heard or felt.
These devices provide an interface to the people to supply and produce information from the
computer. These days the input-output devices have made the use of computers more user-
friendly. The contents of this chapter will help the reader to develop necessary understanding of
the hardware concepts expected of a manager or even to a computer professional. This will also
equip the managers in arriving at effective decisions while acquiring computers either for
personal use or for the organization.

OBJECTIVES

After going through this chapter, you would be able to:

 Identify various basis for classification of computers

 Describe various types of computer systems
 Understand how the data is represented in a computer system
 Describe how information is processed in a computer system
 Discuss the relationship between Central Processing Unit and Memory
 Understand the concept of Machine Cycle
 Describe the Anatomy of a computer System
 Discuss the various types of Processors, Memory, Bus and Ports.
 Discuss the need for Input Devices
 Describe the Keyboard and the use of various keys
 Identify the utility of Pointing devices
 Explain how the Scanners work?
 Discuss the Voice Recognition Input Devices And Other Input Devices
 Discuss the need for Output Devices
 Identify the Soft-copy output devices
 Describe the Visual Display Screen
 Understand the Video standards such as VGA, SVGA
 Describe the working of Printers
 Discuss Audio And Video Output Devices

TYPE OF COMPUTERS

The first digital computer was made using the vacuum tubes as the basic components. Over the
years, we have witnessed technological advances in the field of micro- electronics that resulted
in miniaturization of the electronic components used in the computer system such as transistors,

1
Integrated circuits, Large scale integration, etc. However during all these years of computer
evolution, there were three major fronts on which the developments were directed or focused
and have already been highlighted in the previous chapter. These are:

Size – The first computer occupied large space equivalent to a big room. The efforts were
directed to reduce the size of computer. To achieve this, the vacuum tubes were replaced by
transistors, which appreciably reduced the size of a computer. A transistor is an electrically
operated switch that can alternate between ON and OFF state millions of times per second. A
transistor is about 1/100th the size of vacuum tubes. Then came the development of Integrated
Circuits (ICs), which further reduced the size of the computer. An integrated circuit is a complete
electronic circuit on a single silicon chip. The IC is also called a microchip or a chip. Silicon is an
element widely found in clay and sand and is a semi-conductor. This means the properties are
intermediate between a good conductor such as copper and a non-conductor such as wood or
plastic. This is purified to be used as a base material for electronic circuits. A chip is a tiny
piece of silicon that contains millions of electronic components mounted on it to perform a task.
The increased integration of ICs resulted in LSI and VLSI chips, which has given rise to today’s
small size desktop, laptop and notebook computers.

Recently IBM announced the new carbon nanotube technology for designing transistors.
Carbon nanotubes are atomic-size structures some 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Their extraordinary strength and conductivity allows making of materials that will surpass known
metals and other materials in durability and the ability to pass electrons. IBM researchers say
that the performance of these new transistors outperforms those using silicon, which are at
present the building blocks of computer chips. These have been rated as the highest performing
transistors to date. According to IBM, Carbon nanotubes are already the top candidate to
replace silicon when current chip features just can't be made any smaller, a physical barrier
expected to occur in about 10 to 15 years.

Power – The mini and microturisation of electronic components has enabled manufacturers to
put more power in their computer in terms of speed and the storage capacity. For example the
today’s PC is more powerful than a few year old mainframe system.

Cost – The efforts have been to reduce the cost of acquiring a computer. Today’s computers
are several times cheaper that the yester years mainframe systems. The cost is declining but
power is increasing steadily.

On the basis of processing speed, size, cost and capacity to store data, the computers can be
classified into the following types. However the separation line between various types of
computers is diminishing very fast with the increasing power, reducing prices and increasing
storage.

 Super Computers – Super computers are the most powerful and fastest computers ever
invented. These are high capacity machines that require special air-conditioning. These
computers are used for complex phenomenon such as weather forecasting, automotive
designs, oil exploration, designing of nuclear reactors, etc.

2
 Figure 2.1: Super Computer

There are two design approaches for supercomputers. The vector processor approach is
the traditional design in which a small number (generally 1-16) of specialized powerful
processors perform calculations at high speed. Due to this reason they are very costly
and have another drawback of processing being performed one by one by the
processors. The second design involves parallel processing approach. In this the single
task is divided into parallel processes, which operate on them simultaneously. This is
called parallel processing as it spreads the processing tasks over large number 9Usually
thousands or even millions) of standard, inexpensive microprocessors. Due to this
reason their cost is relatively low and have much faster speed.

 Mainframe Computers - Mainframe computers are the ones used mainly for centralized
business applications with large number of terminals connected to the mainframe
machine. This is the oldest category of computers requiring large space for installation,
high air-conditioning and provides reasonably high processing speeds and storage
capacity. These machines required trained personnel for operation and maintenance.
Some examples are: IBM 360, EC-1033, ICL2960, etc. The major users include big
corporate, banks, universities, insurance companies, etc. These are fast being replaced
by so called ‘Servers’ of today with network of smaller computers having a powerful
central server.

3
 Figure 2.2: Mainframe computer

 Mini Computers -These are midway in cost and power between mainframe computers
and the micro-computers. These are scaled down version of mainframe systems. These
can be used either as a standalone system or in a network consisting of smaller
microcomputers. These are used by medium-sized companies or departments within
large organizations. Some examples are PDP-11, TDC-316, VAX-11/70.


Figure 2.3: Minicomputer

 Microcomputers – Microcomputers are the small computing devices that make use of a
microprocessor for processing functions. There are two principal types of it: Work
Stations and Personal Computers (PCs).

Personal computers (PCs) are the desktop or tower type computers that can run
generalized software such as word processing software, database software or
accounting package. Depending on their size they come in various forms such as:
Desktop, Laptops, Notebook, and Pocket PCs. The desktops are basically non-portable
systems that are placed on desks and can be expanded easily. The Laptops, Notebook
and Pocket PCs on the other hand are portable systems with decreasing size and weight
respectively and having inferior display (LCD) as compared to desktops monitor. These
are difficult to operate, as the keys are compacted together making them harder to use.
The Pocket PCs could further be of various types such as Electronic organizers,
Palmtop computers, Pen Computers, etc.

4
 Figure 2.4: MicroComputers – Pen, Pocket , Notebook, Work Station, Desktop

Workstations look like desktop PCs but are extremely powerful computers. Their costs is
high as compared to desktop PCs and are used mainly for specialized applications such
as CAD/CAM, High-end Graphical applications, etc. and are mainly used by scientists,
engineers, designers and researchers. However the distinction between the desktop
PCs and the workstations is fading slowly with the increase in power of desktop PCs and
the declining cost of workstations. Sun workstation is a popular machine of this category.

 Embedded computers – Embedded computers makes use of a microprocessor chips in

new generation smart appliance such as washing machines, microwave ovens,
automobiles, etc. The microprocessor stores relevant data about various operations to
be performed and helps in controlling it.

Servers are a new breed of computer that is replacing the traditional types of computers such as
mainframe and minicomputers. A server is a centralized computer system that allows the
processing for hundreds of users linked to it through terminals, PCs or workstations. The server
provides the centralized storage of data and programs to be used and shared by the various
users in the network. The users could be as close as a room or in different parts of the globe.
The linkage could be either wired or wireless. For more details, please refer to the chapter on
networking in this book.

5
DATA REPRESENTATION IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM

The computer is a two-state device. The two states are: On and Off. These two states are
represented by two corresponding digits 1 and 0. The ‘On’ state of the electronic circuit is
represented in computer by a ‘1’ while ‘Off” state is represented by a ‘0’. The system that makes
use of these two digits is called a ‘Binary System’ and the digits are called binary digits or bits.
All data and programs in a computer system are represented by using these two binary digits 1
and 0.

Since individual bits cannot represent all the numbers and characters, which need to be
processed or stored, the bit are therefore arranged together and is called a byte. It may be
noted that there are 256 codes possible with 8 bits (28 =256), which permits 0 to 255 possible
combinations. Each byte corresponds to a character or a number. When we type data from the
keyboard, the CPU accepts this data, translates it into binary codes and stores it into the main
memory. There are various binary coding schemes for representing data in the computer
system. The most popular ones are:

 ASCII – ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This
code is used most often on microcomputers. Although originally it made use of 7 bits to
represent a byte, an additional bit was added to the left making it an 8-bit code. The
additional bit allows representing more characters such as math symbols. All letters or
digits have a unique code. For example the code for alphabet ‘B’ is 0100 0010, while for
digit 4, the ASCII code is 0011 0100.

 EBCDIC – EBCDIC is the acronym for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange
Code. This coding scheme uses 8-bit byte to represent a character. For example, the
EBCDIC code for alphabet ‘B’ is 1100 0010 while for digit 4, the code is 1111 0100. This
coding scheme is mainly used on mainframe computers.

Table 2.1: Number System Codes – Binary and Hexa-Decimal

DECIMAL BINARY HEXADECIMAL

0 0000 0
1 0001 1
2 0010 2
3 0011 3
4 0100 4
5 0101 5
6 0110 6
7 0111 7
8 1000 8
9 1001 9
10 1010 A
11 1011 B
12 1100 C
13 1101 D
14 1110 E
15 1111 F

6
 Table 2.2: Number System Codes – EBCDIC and ASCII

CHARACTER EBCDIC ASCII

A 11000001 1000001
B 11000010 1000010
C 11000011 1000011
D 11000100 1000100
E 11000101 1000101
F 11000110 1000110
G 11000111 1000111
H 11001000 1001000
I 11001001 1001001
J 11010001 1001010
K 11010010 1001011
L 11010011 1001100
M 11010100 1001101
N 11010101 1001110
O 11010110 1001111
P 11010111 1010000
Q 11011000 1010001
R 11011001 1010010
S 11100010 1010011
T 11100011 1010100
U 11100100 1010101
V 11100101 1010110
W 11100110 1010111
X 11100111 1011000
Y 11101000 1011001
Z 11101001 1011010
0 11110000 0110000
1 11110001 0110001
2 11110010 0110010
3 11110011 0110011
4 11110100 0110100
5 11110101 0110101
6 11110110 0110110
7 11110111 0110111
8 11111000 0111000
9 11111001 0111001

 UNICODE – Unlike ASCII and EBCDIC, which cover only English language, this code is
useful to represent various language characters such as French, German, etc. The
current UNICODE standard provides around 34168 characters in the coding list covering
principal languages of the world.

7
Sometimes a special extra bit called ‘parity bit’ or ‘check bit’ is used to detect errors in the
transmission of data. The errors may be due to various reasons such as – electrical fluctuations,
high temperature, etc. A parity bit is an additional bit attached at the end of a byte to check for
data errors. When a transmission error in the data takes place, the bits will not be the same.
Parity schemes may be Even Parity or Odd parity. In the even parity, for example, the letter ‘D’
has ASCII code of 0100 0100. In this code since there are two 1s therefore the parity bit would
be set to ‘0’ so as to make the sum of 1 bits even. When the data is transmitted and any error
takes place, the parity bit would not match with the bits and an alert is sounded.

Sometimes for efficiency purposes, it is convenient to convert binary numbers to another

number system. The commonly used alternative number system is Hexadecimal Number
System. This system uses 16 characters (digits 0 to 9 and alphabets A to F) to represent the
data in the computer system.

HOW INFORMATION IS PROCESSED IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM

The data, which is fed into the computer system, is processed by a black box. This black box
contains number of electronic circuits that permit the conversion of data into information. The
processor converts data into information in a machine cycle making use of memory. The
processor is the hardware, which is responsible for executing program instructions. A
microprocessor is the basis for the microcomputer and is also referred as ‘CPU’. The CPU
makes use of memory for processing instructions in a computer system. Apart from CPU and
memory there are large number of other components that are found inside the so called black
box or system cabinet which shall be explained later in the chapter.

CPU

Central Processing Unit (CPU) is one of the most important units of a computer system. It is a
collection of electronic circuits made up of thousands of Integrated Circuits (ICs) and millions of
transistors placed onto these ICs. ICs are also called chips or microchips because the
transistors are etched onto a small silicon chip. Each transistor acts like an electronic switch and
can be in any one of the two states – Open or closed. The number 1 represents the open state
and number 0 represents closed state. The advances in microelectronics permitted more
transistors to be placed onto one chip. The process of packing is called ‘Integration’. This allows
more circuits to be placed onto the same chip (referred as CPU) thereby eliminating the need
for separate chips for various tasks and at the same time increasing the speed of the computer.
It follows the instructions provided by the software to manipulate data into information.

It has two basic parts: the control unit and the arithmetic and logical unit.

The Control Unit: This part of the CPU oversees and controls all computer activities. It acts as a
supervisor for the whole system including the ALU and tells it how to carry out the program
instructions. Instructions are the detailed description of the actions to be carried out during input,
processing, output, storage and transmission. The Control unit doesn’t actually execute the
instructions but simple directs other processing elements to do so.

8
The Arithmetic and Logical Unit (ALU): The ALU part of the CPU consist of the circuitry that
performs arithmetic and logical operations on the data. Arithmetic operations include the basic
operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The logical operations compare
one element of information with another to find if one element is greater, less or equal to the
other. It performs arithmetic and logical operations on the data and control the speed of these
operations.

Main Memory

Main memory is also known as Primary memory or Internal memory of a computer system. This
is the temporary working storage memory required to process the data. The primary memory
holds the data and instructions for processing as well as holds the results of processing. The
primary memory is volatile in nature as its contents are lost as soon as the power is switched
off. The main memory is a high-speed memory available in a limited amount (generally 32, 64,
128 or 256MB), and is available in the form of pluggable modules called SIMMs.

Both the ALU and the Control unit are able to perform their job because of the computer
memory capabilities. The two units of CPU i.e. Control Unit and ALU work together with memory
according to memory cycle.

The Machine Cycle

The control unit directs the processing of data. This unit coordinates this process with ALU and
the Memory unit to complete the processing. The processing is actually a four-step process:

 Fetch Cycle – The control unit fetches the instruction from the main memory and stores
it in a small memory area called a register.
 Decoding – The control unit decodes or translates the instruction into individual
commands and moves the data it requires from memory to the ALU.
 Execution Cycle – The ALU perform the operations on the data as specified in the
instructions.
 Storage – The results of operations are stored in primary memory or in a register called
accumulator.

Instruction
FETCH DECODE Cycle

Execution
STORE Cycle
EXECUTE

9
 Figure 2.5: The Machine Cycle

The time taken to complete the first two steps in which instructions are obtained and translated
are called ‘Instruction Cycle or I-Cycle. The time it takes to complete the last two steps, which
produce processing results, are known as Execution Cycle or E-Cycle. The time taken to
complete all the four steps collectively is referred to as Machine Cycle. To complete this
machine cycle, the control unit makes use of circuitry referred to as ‘Registers’.

Registers

Registers are high speed, small temporary storage areas in the microprocessor itself for storing
intermediate results of calculations. Registers are the fastest memory available for use in the
PC, even faster than the L1 cache, because they are hard-wired right into the processor logic.
Registers can be considered to be the storage area for data and instructions, which is
processed immediately. On the other hand, main memory holds the data that will be used a little
bit later. This means the computer loads the data from the main memory into the registers just
prior to processing which helps in faster processing. For example, the processor can't directly
perform arithmetic in memory. If you want to add 5 to a memory location, the processor will
normally do this by loading the initial value from memory location into a register, adding 5 to the
register, and then saving the value back to memory. This happens very quickly and
transparently to the programmer.

The width (in bits) of the processor's registers determines how much data it can compute at a
time. This is sometimes used to specify the processor's "size". For example, you may hear
people talking about a "32 bit processor" or a "64 bit processor" which actually refers to the
register size within the CPU. Every processor has a few of these, some dedicated to a specific
task and others available for general use by programmers. Registers help in executing the
machine cycle. The various types of registers are:

 Instruction Register – This stores the instruction to be executed in the next memory
cycle.
 Address Register – This contains the address of the data to be used in executing an
instruction.
 Storage Register – This register temporarily stores data that are moved from main
memory and waiting for processing or the data that are about to be sent to main
memory.
 Accumulator Register – Also simply called Accumulators, stores the result of
computation at each arithmetic operation. The results are moved from this to the main
memory for further action.
 General Purpose Registers – As the name suggests, these can be used either for
holding data, address or result of computation.

10
Processing Speeds

The speed of processing of a computer system can be measured in several ways:

 Time taken to complete one machine cycle in fraction of a second. This time may be
measured in units of millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond and picosecond. The
various relationships are:

1 millisecond = 1 thousandth of a second

1 microsecond = 1 millionth of a second
1 nanosecond = 1 billionth of a second and
1 picosecond = 1 trillionth of a second

 Speed of microprocessors is generally measured in term of megahertz (MHz). It may be

noted that:

1 Mhz means 1 million of machine cycle per second

1 Ghz means 1 billion of the machine cycle per second

This also indicates the clock speed of the microprocessor. For example, 1.2 GHz Pentium
based microprocessor processes 1.2 billion cycles per second.

 Another way of describing the processing speed is in terms of time for executing million
instructions per second called (MIPS). The MIPS rating ranges from 1-100 for desktop
PCs and is around 300-400 for mainframe computers. The MIPS rating is constantly
growing and new computers may have higher MIPS.

 The processor speed is also sometimes measured in terms of time in floating point
operations per second or a ‘flop’. It means how many arithmetic calculations computer
can perform per second. Floating means floating of decimal from one calculation to
another. Due to high speed of processor, the speed using these criteria is usually
expressed in terms of mega flops. A mega flop means millions of floating point
operations per second.

ANATOMY OF A COMPUTER SYSTEM

The black box, which converts the data into information, is referred to as the ‘system unit’ by
most of us. The system unit contains the hardware and electrical components that enable a
computer to work. Very few of us are really curious to know as to what is actually inside this
black box and what components make up this black box? This is similar to the fact that majority
of us never lift the bonnet of our car to see what part are there and how do they work. In this
section we shall try to uncover the black box by lifting the cabinet cover of our desktop system
unit and find as well as understand the various components inside the system cabinet.

A typical system cabinet has the following parts or components:

 Power Supply
 System Board or Mother Board

11
  CPU or Microprocessor
 Special Processors
 System Clock
 RAM, ROM and Other memory Chips
 Expansion Slots
 Bus
 Ports
 Add-in Boards

Let’s briefly understand each of these one by one.

Power Supply: A computer system runs on Direct Current (DC) instead of the standard power
supply in our home or offices that is Alternating Current (AC). To convert the AC into DC to be
used in the computer, we use a specific device called power supply or SMPS (Switch Mode
Power Supply). When we switch the computer ON, the power supply gets activated first and
converts the normal AC supply from the standard power outlet into DC.

As we have seen that the power supply in our home or offices is of poor quality i.e. either too
low or too high, this makes it unfit to be used in a computer. This uneven power supply is
harmful for a computer system. For example, a sudden surge or spike in the AC supply can
even burn out the circuitry in the computer. For this reason, we generally connect the computer
to the main power supply through such equipments such as Surge Protectors, Spike
Suppressors, Constant Voltage Transformer (CVT) or Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS).

System or Mother Board: Inside the system unit is a main circuit board known as
motherboard. A board is a hardware device onto which most of the chips and computer’s
circuitry is placed and to which virtually every part of a PC is connected. A PC motherboard
contains a processor chip (CPU), memory chips, the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), the
PC’s power supply, ports for connecting input devices such as keyboards and pointing devices
and add-in boards in addition to the circuitry for connecting all these components.

Figure 2.6: System Motherboard

12
 Figure 2.7: Computer System Unit and its various Parts
(Source:Using Information Technology-Williams, Sawyer, Hutchinson)

CPU: In a PC, we use a processor in which both the ALU and the control unit are placed on the
same chip, which is referred to as microprocessor. A microprocessor is the smallest type of
processor with capabilities of control unit and the ALU.

13
 Figure 2.8: Central Processing Unit

Intel and Motorola manufacture the most popular microprocessor chips. Intel microprocessors
are used by IBM compatibles while Motorola microprocessors are used by Apple and
Commodore systems.

Intel Microprocessor Family – Intel is manufacturing chips for IBM and IBM compatible PCs for
companies like Compaq, Dell, Zenith, etc. Some companies such as Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD), Cyrix, etc make variants of Intel chips. The Intel chips were identified by numbers such
as 8086, 8088, 80286, 80386, 80486. These chips were referred by their last three digits i.e.
286, 386 or 486. After this, Intel started marketing its chips under the name Pentium. The
advancements in the chips is indicated by roman number attached to Pentium such as Pentium
I, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium IV. The latest Pentium IV chip has been designed with the
innovative Intel® NetBurst™ micro architecture, and is now available at speeds up to 2.53 GHz
delivering higher-performance processing for home and business solutions. The Intel has also
launched its Celeron processor series, which is a low value high performance microprocessor
with 1.30 GHz speeds and 0.13-mircron technologies.

Motorola Microprocessor Family – Motorola manufactures chips which are identified by numbers
such as 68000, 68020, 68030 and 68040 also referred as 68K family. The Motorola tied up with
IBM and Apple and produced PowerPC microprocessor, which combines high speed processing
power with the ability to run both the Apple Macintosh and IBM compatible software. The
PowerPC chip offers a powerful alterative to the Intel Pentium chip due to its smaller size, lower
heat dissipation and substantially lower price combined with ability to run wide range of existing
software.

Other Microprocessor Chips - The chip technologies such as RISC are being used by several
companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation (now a part of Compaq) in their Alpha chip.
RISC (pronounced as risk) stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computing. RISC chips makes
use of few and simple instructions than the conventional computer systems i.e. the instruction
set is small and simple. However this requires more instructions to accomplish a task. Other
advantage of RISC is that because of the more simple instructions, RISC chips require fewer
transistors, which makes them easier to design and cheaper to produce. Hewlett Packard and
Apple for instance also use RISC chips. A problem with this is that software needs to be
modified to be used on systems based on these chips.

The biggest threat for RISC would be a new technology called EPIC. EPIC stands for Explicitly
Parallel Instruction Computing. EPIC can execute many instructions in parallel to one another.
EPIC is created by Intel and is a combination of both CISC and RISC. This will allow the
processing of Windows-based as well as UNIX-based applications by the same CPU.

14
Special Processor Chips: The CPU of a computer performs many functions thereby slowing
down the performance of the system. In order to improve the performance, the CPU should be
relieved of specific tasks, which requires the use of additional microprocessors. These are
referred to as Coprocessors and handle the specific time consuming tasks. These coprocessors
work under the control of the CPU. The commonly used coprocessors are math coprocessor
and graphics coprocessor.

The System Clock: The speed of a computer is determined by its system clock. A system
clock is a circuit that generates vibrations from a quartz crystal at a fixed rate to deliver a steady
stream of electronic pulses to the CPU. Each pulse indicates a new instruction cycle. The faster
the clock, more the pulses generated resulting in higher instruction cycle that means faster
processing. All computers contain a system clock. The clock pulses being pulses per second
are measured in terms of megahertz (MHz) or millions of electrical pulses per second. (1 Mhz is
equal to 1 million clock cycles per second). The oldest PCs had a clock rate of 4.77 Mhz while
today’s computer provides a clock rate of 800 Mhz in Pentium III and 1.6 GHz (1000 Megahertz)
in Pentium IV microprocessors. The higher the megahertz of the CPU, the more is the
processing speed of the computer.

Memory Chips: RAM is the acronym for Random Access Memory. It is the main or primary
memory of a computer system that temporarily holds the data and instructions required by the
CPU for execution. This memory provides random access to the stored data. It is "random
access" because you can access any memory cell directly if you know the row and column that
intersect at that cell i.e any piece of data can be accessed immediately without any delay. This
memory is written continuously, then erased and written again. The RAM is said to be volatile
memory since the contents of this memory are lost as we power off the computer.

The RAM chips could be plugged onto the Motherboard using memory modules or boards. This
board in turn is plugged into a slot in the computer’s system or motherboard. The first such
memory chip was called SIMM, the acronym for Single In-line Memory Module which is basically
a multi-chip card. These come in the modules of 1M, 2M, 4M, 8M, 16M, 32M, and 64M. In most
computers, you have to install SIMMs in pairs of equal capacity and speed. This standard was
replaced by DIMMs. DIMM is the acronym for Dual In-line Memory Module. DIMMs range in
capacity from 8 MB to 128 MB per module and can be installed singly instead of in pairs. It may
be noted that SIMM and DIMM basically refers to the memory circuit boards and not to the
individual chips. Generally DIMMs are preferred over SIMMs as they can be used singly
instead of pairs, as was the case with SIMMs.

Electronic memory chips comes in a variety of forms to serve a variety of purposes. The
principal forms of RAM chips are:

DRAM: Acronym for Dynamic Random Access Memory. The DRAM has to be dynamically
refreshed (gives the name dynamic) constantly otherwise it will loose its contents. This
refreshing process takes time thereby slowing down the memory performance. It can be
considered like a leaking bucket that needs to be replenished otherwise it will get empty.

Static RAM: Static random access memory unlike DRAM need not be refreshed continuously
(hence the name static). It is faster, larger, more expensive and consumes more power. Due to
its high speed, it is used primarily for cache.

15
EDO DRAM: Extended data-out dynamic random access memory This is based on the
assumption that the next data-address to be requested by the CPU follows the current one so it
sends that also. As soon as the address of the first bit is located, EDO DRAM begins looking for
the next bit. Maximum transfer rate to L2 cache is approximately 264 megabytes per second.

Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM): Synchronous dynamic random access memory can synchronise
itself with the clock that controls the CPU. This makes the data transfers more reliable and
faster because timing delays are eliminated through synchronization. SDRAM is about five
percent faster than EDO RAM and is the most common form in desktops today. Maximum
transfer rate to L2 cache is approximately 528 megabytes per second.

In addition to the above memory in a computer system, there are several other types of
memory, which helps in improving the performance of the system. These are: Virtual Memory,
Cache memory, Video memory and Buffers.

Cache Memory: During computer operations, there is a frequent need to move data and
instructions from memory or disk to the CPU for processing. This is a slow operation in view of
the fast sped of CPU and frequent data movement slows down the system performance. This
limitation is overcome by use of a special high-speed memory that the CPU can access quickly
is called cache memory. The cache memory is located between CPU and main memory and
temporarily stores the data and instructions required by the CPU. When CPU needs any data
for processing, first it will search its cache memory for the data and if not found it will move onto
get the data from relatively slow main memory. This reduces the number of data requests from
the main memory by the CPU and hence the system performance improves. When the CPU
finds the required data in the cache, it is called “cache-hit” and when it doesn’t it is referred as
‘cache-miss”. The cache memory is used on computers with very fast CPUs.The basic types
are:

 Primary cache or Level 1 (L1) cache or Internal Cache - Primary cache is fast, physically
integrated into the CPU chip, and not very large (typically upto 256Kb). While it's useful
for storing some instructions, it usually relies on a secondary (L2) cache for an all-
around boost of system performance.
 Secondary cache or Level 2 (L2) Cache or External Cache - A secondary cache is larger
than the primary or L1 cache (mounted in special sockets on the system motherboard)
and fits between CPU and main memory (RAM). It's faster than main memory, but
slower than primary cache memory. It's typically around 256Kb or 512Kb in size.

CPU
CPU Cache
Cache RAM
RAM Virtual
Virtual Me Disk Storage
Memory
Figure 2.10: Memory Management

Flash Memory: Flash memory chips are one of the latest memory devices is a form of Static
RAM. It works similar to main memory except that this is a non-volatile memory i.e. data
remains stored even when the power s turned off. It is used more as a permanent storage
device than as RAM. In fact, Flash memory is considered a solid-state storage device. Solid-
state means that there are no moving parts -- everything is electronic instead of mechanical.
This memory chips can be inserted into the slots connected to the motherboard. It is generally

16
used in notebook computers. It is used for easy and fast information storage in such devices as
digital cameras, TVs, VCRs, computer's BIOS chip and home video game consoles.

ROM Chips: ROM stands for Read Only Memory and is also known as firmware because of the
fact that it can simply be read and cannot be written or erased by the users i.e. it’s static and
fixed. It is also called non-volatile non-changeable memory. ROM is an integrated circuit
programmed with specific data when it is manufactured. It generally stores programs and
instructions that are needed by the computer frequently. For example: BIOS program needed at
the time of starting the computer is written in ROM. The basic ROM types are:
 ROM – Read Only Memory
 PROM - Programmable read-only memory
 EPROM - Erasable programmable read-only memory. EPROM chips can be rewritten
many times.
 EEPROM - Electrically erasable programmable read-only memory

The Computer Bus: For processing the data, the data needs to be moved from one component
of the computer to another such as from input devices to RAM, RAM to the Control Unit, Control
Unit to the ALU, from ALU again to the RAM and from RAM to the output devices. For this
communication to take place, there are two ways of connecting the components. The various
components could be linked together by drawing wires from each to the other. This method will
complicate the whole design and is cumbersome as well. The other method is to connect all the
components to a common set of wires called a bus. The communication path over which data
and instructions are moved from one component to another in a computer system is called a
bus. The bus in a computer system can be considered to be similar to a multilane highway, the
higher the number of lanes it has, the faster the data can travel. For example: an 8-bit bus has 8
pathways, a 32-bit bus (used in Intel 80486 CPU) has 32 pathways for communicating the data,
while Pentiums are 64 bit processors. Thus Pentiums can transfer twice as much data at a time
compared to 80486 CPUs.

Figure 2.9: Computer Buses

There are different types of buses performing specific tasks. The most common are: System
Bus, Local Bus, and Expansion Bus. However, every bus is composed of two distinct parts: the
data bus and the address bus. There are certain important characteristics of the bus that affects
the system performance. These are:

17
Bus Width The wider the bus, the more information can flow over the channel.

Bus Speed The speed of the bus determines how many bits of information can be sent across
each wire each second.

Bus Interfacing On a system that has multiple buses, circuitry must be provided by the chipset
to connect the buses and allow devices on one to talk to devices on the other. This device is
called a "bridge". The most commonly found bridge is the PCI-ISA bridge, which is part of the
system chipset on a Pentium PC.

Plug and Play: In the past, removing or adding a new piece of hardware in a system was an
uphill task as it involved going through a complex set of procedures, changing switch settings,
etc. Plug and Play (abbreviated as PnP) is a standard developed for IBM compatible PCs to
allow easy connectivity and usability of new piece of hardware. Plug and Play refers to the
ability that permit an ordinary user to add a new hardware device/component to a computer
system without having to go through complex setup procedures. Plug and Play support is built
into the Operating System, which automatically detects and configures the new hardware
component on your system. For example, to add or remove a modem, fax card, a sound card, a
printer, etc. on a Window 95/98 system, the system automatically loads or unloads the specific
device drivers to configure them for use without rebooting the system. This feature simplifies the
process of expanding and modifying the systems.

Ports: Any device that is not a part of the motherboard needs to be attached to the computer.
A port is a socket on the outside (usually back) of the system cabinet through which peripheral
devices (Printer, Monitor, Modem, Scanner, etc.) can be plugged into the computer system.
Ports are the points from where information enters or leaves the computer. To attach the
devices, a communication cable is required one end of which is connected to the port and the
other to the peripheral device. The number and type of ports vary from computer to computer
but they usually are of the following types:

Parallel Ports – A parallel port permits data transfer of 8 bits or 1 byte at a time over parallel
lines. These are therefore faster than serial port. The data transfer is efficient only up to a
distance of 15 –20 feet. The parallel ports are normally used for connecting printers and are
therefore also referred as LPT port.

Serial Ports – A serial port is a port that can be used for serial communication, in which only 1
bit is transmitted at a time over a single line. Most serial ports on personal computers conform to
the RS-232C or RS-422 standards and therefore the serial port is also sometimes referred as
RS-232 port. A serial port is a general-purpose interface that can be used for almost any type of
device, including modems, mice, and certain special printers. Since the serial ports provide
slower communication, therefore they are not suitable for high-speed data communication such
as Printers. These are commonly labeled on the system as COM ports indicating
communications. In certain systems we find that for connecting mouse, there is a special port
called ‘Mouse port’.

USB Ports – In the past, connecting devices to computers has been a real headache. For each
devices to be attached we were required to open the cabinet cover, install the relevant boards
or cards, modify software and set certain switches. We have various ports such as serial for
certain devices such as mouse, scanner, etc. and parallel for other devices such as printers.

18
The goal of USB is to end all of these headaches. The Universal Serial Bus gives you a single,
standardized, easy-to-use way to connect up to 127 devices to a computer.

Figure 2.11: USB Port

Almost every computer we purchase today comes with one or two Universal Serial Bus
connectors on the back. These USB connectors allow attaching everything from mouse to
printers, Scanners, etc. to your computer quickly and easily.

Firewire - Firewire is one of the fastest peripheral standards ever developed, which makes it
great for use with multimedia peripherals such as digital video cameras and other high-speed
devices like the latest hard disk drives and printers. It is much faster than USB and can connect
upto 63 high bandwidth devices. FireWire ports operate at up to 400 megabits per second. The
future PCs will have Firewire ports once the cost of it declines to an acceptable level. Firewire is
integrated into all Power Mac G4 computers.

INPUT DEVICES

The input device is one, which supplies or feeds data into the computer for processing. Input
hardware consists of devices that accept data and instructions (programs) that people can read
(and convert them to a form the computer can understand (binary digits 0s and 1s) and process
it. There are lots of common types of input devices, almost too many to kept track of.

However, the most common are keyboards, pointing devices, and scanners. Coming up fast
are speech recognition devices. The input devices can broadly be categorized as:

 KEYBOARD TYPE DEVICES – These are used to enter data by typing it in-a slow manual
process.
 Keyboards
 Terminals
 SOURCE DATA ENTRY TYPE – The source data entry devices refers to those devices
other than keyboards i.e. without pressing any keys but data is inputted directly from the
source in a machine-readable form.

 Pointing Devices – These are used to move a pointer around on the screen to execute
commands or to manipulate the data that has already been entered.

 Scanning Devices – These can read the printed data and convert it into a digital form
that the computer can process.

19
 MAGNETIC, SMART and OPTICAL CARDS

 VOICE RECOGNITION INPUT DEVICES – These can hear the spoken words and then
either execute them as commands or enter them as text.

 OTHER INPUT DEVICES

The discussion on all of the above categories would be unmanageable in this book, however,
we shall discuss the most commonly used input devices that are listed below:

 Keyboards and Terminals

 Pointing Devices
 Scanners
 Digitizers
 Voice and Sound input devices

COMPUTER KEYBOARD

The keyboard is the most popular and almost a standard input device on microcomputers. It
converts the letters, numbers, and other special keys pressed by the user into electrical signals
or machine readable codes (1 and 0) that can be understood and processed by the computer.
The keyboard looks like a typewriter keyboard with some special keys added to it. The standard
(conventional) computer keyboards are similar to the typewriter keyboard other than some
special function keys. For example, the Escape key is often used to cancel a command. The
keyboard is the most common and convenient way of communicating with the computer.
However to use them efficiently, one need to learn the typing. Incidentally a number of software
packages are available which helps to learn as well as sharpen the typing skills. Numeric keys
located above the alphabetic keys are labeled with both numbers and symbols. When you
press these keys, you enter either the indicated number or, if you hold down Shift, the indicated
symbols.

With the increasing use of keyboard as a standard input media, the attention has shifted to
ergonomic keyboards. Ergonomics is the study of the physical relationship between people and
their work environment. Such keyboards are adjustable and help reduce physical problems and
prevent injuries. Researchers also noted that typing on the QWERTY keyboard is poorly
distributed between the hands and fingers, causing the weaker ring and little fingers to be
overworked.

20
 Figure 2.12: Computer Keyboard

The function of various keys on a standard keyboard have been explained below:

 Function keys, labeled F1 through F12, are used to issue commands specific to the software
in use at a specific point of time. These keys perform functions assigned to them by the
software such as saving documents or selecting text, opening help dialog box,
 The Backspace key backs the cursor from the current location and usually deletes
characters. This helps in quickly moving backwards and delete characters when we find a
mistake while entering data.
 The Enter (or Return) key is used to execute the command entered through the keyboard.
Often it is the last or final keystroke of an operation. For example, while we enter data, we
are required to press Enter after completion of each line or set of data or to move to a new
paragraph.
 Keyboard lights indicate the status of the CapsLock, Numlock and ScrollLock keys that lock
a command and acts like a toggle switch between two states. The lighting of Caps Lock LED
indicates that only capital letters can be used. The lighting of Scroll Lock LED prevents the
screen from scrolling. The pressing of Num Lock key (light on), will turn on the numeric
keypad on the right side of the keyboard i.e. only numeric keys will work Since these are
toggle switches, if it is off when you press it, it turns on. If it is on when you press it, it turns
off. During On state, the corresponding indicator LED will be lit.
 The Tab key moves the insertion point to the next tab stop and the Shift+Tab (Backtab) key
moves it back to the previous position.
 The Shift key has an up arrow on it to indicate that if held down, it shifts to enter uppercase
letters or letters on the upper portion of the keys e.g. to type @, we need to hold Shift down
and then press the key bearing @ which is on the upper side else it will type 2.
 The Spacebar is the longest key on the keyboard and moves the insertion point one
character to the right and enters a space.
 Alphanumeric keys are used to enter data. The alphabetic keys are arranged just as they
are on a typewriter. When we press these keys, we enter lowercase letter. If we hold down
the Shift key when we press them, we enter uppercase letter.

21
 Arrow keys are the cursor movement keys and move the cursor or insertion point in the
direction of the arrow you press. It could be , , , or . Numeric keypads also have
arrow keys that work only when NumLock is not engaged or the NumLock LED is off.
 PgUp and PgDn keys moves the contents of a file being displayed on the screen up or down
but one screen at a time.
 Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys can each be used in conjunction with another key to issue a
command that is specific to software in use. This feature permits to incorporate more
commands that can be used through function keys.
 Esc key allows us to exit or abort a command or a program and return to the previous
screen. It also sometimes cancels a command.
 Print Scrn key prints on the printer, the currently displayed data visible on the screen.
 Pause key is a toggle switch, which temporarily suspends the current command execution.
Pressing it again will restart the command.
 The Delete key erases text at the current cursor position.
 The Insert key operates in two modes: Insertion and Over-write or Type-over. In insertion
mode, the text being typed is additional text and is inserted at the cursor position, while in
the over-write mode, the typed text replaces the existing text.
 Home and End keys moves the cursor to the beginning or end of a line, page or document.

However, the keyboards differ from each other in the following ways:

 Key Arrangement – The location of the keys on the keyboard varies from keyboard to
keyboard. The QWERTY (the keys read from left to right on the keyboard) keyboards
are most common in English Speaking countries.

 Special purpose keys – Certain keys that are designed to perform some specific
functions. For example, Function keys, Multimedia keys, etc.

 Detachability – Whether the keyboard can be detached from the computer or not? In
notebooks and several other systems, the keyboard is not detachable.

TERMINALS

A terminal is a device that consists of a keyboard, a video screen or monitor, and a

communication link usually to a mini or mainframe system. The terminal is used both for input
as well as output for displaying results on the screen. Terminals used may be either:

 Dumb or Dummy Terminals – The most common type of terminals used prior to
microcomputers were dumb terminals or dummy terminals. These are called dumb
because they do not possess any processing capability of their own and can accept
input from the keyboard by typing data or instructions into the computer and receiving
the same from other computers without any manipulations. For example, the terminals
placed at railway reservation counters, airline check-in counters, or terminals in a Unix or
Linux environment.

 Intelligent or Smart Terminals – The intelligent terminals on the other hand possess local
processing capability apart from the conventional input and output modes. In order to
perform these functions, the terminals are provided with their local RAM and CPU.
However, strictly speaking the intelligent terminals cannot be used for general-purpose

22
 tasks i.e. cannot be used as a standalone computer despite having CPU and RAM.
Examples are: Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and Point-of-Sale terminals. ATMs are
getting popular in India as more and more banks are setting up such units. ATMs can be
used for functions performed conventionally be a Teller in a bank such as making
deposits, check balances, transfer money, and withdrawing cash from accounts. A point-
of-Sale (POS) terminal is a smart device that captures and records all transactions at
their place of sale and enables the use of this data for inventory, billing and other related
functions. The POS are generally found in big departmental stores.

Figure 2.13: Computer Terminal

However, today even a PC with local storage can also be used as an intelligent terminal
because of its decreasing cost and increasing power. The local storage takes the load off
from the main computer.

POINTING DEVICES

The most natural way of conveying something is through the act of pointing. The same
capability is incorporated in computers through certain input devices.

Mouse: The most popular pointing device is the mouse, which accounts for about 80 percent of
all pointing devices sold. A mouse is an input device with buttons and a small ball (trackball)
underneath that rotates by rolling the device on a flat surface and causes a corresponding
movement of a pointer on the computer’s display screen.

Figure 2.14: Pointing Device – Mouse

The mouse pointer is the symbol that indicates the position of the mouse on the display screen.
The pointer may be an arrow, or a person’s pointing finger or any other symbol selected by the

23
user. When the mouse is moved on the flat surface (mouse pad), the ball rotates and translates
the movement into digital signals that changes the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the
mouse pointer. There may be either 1,2,or 3 buttons on the topside of the device. We need to
press these buttons on the mouse for selecting or executing a program. These buttons are
software specific and are used for clicking, dropping and dragging functions. The mouse is
connected to the computer through a cable and a connector and is plugged into a special port
(usually serial port). It is the tail like cable and the rounded head of the device that suggested
the name mouse.

Other pointing devices are: Trackballs, Joysticks, Touch Screens, Touch Pads, Light Pen,
Digitizing Tablet, etc.

SCANNING DEVICES

Typing numeric and text data into a computer is both time consuming as well as prone to errors.
To minimize the errors, number of organizations and users resort to source data-entry method
such as using a Scanner. This provides a method of data entry in which data enters the
computer directly from the written or printed form without the keying in process. A scanning
device translates images of text, drawing, pictures, photographs, etc. into digital form for
processing by the computer. The popular scanning devices are:

 Bar Code Readers

 Scanners
 Fax Machines

Bar Code Readers

One of the most widely used direct entry devices is the bar code scanner that reads bar codes.
Bar codes are the vertical zebra-striped marks we find on most retail products. These are made
up of bars of different widths and spacing that convey alphabetic and numeric information about
products. The bar codes are read by bar-code readers, which are photoelectric scanners that
translate the bar code symbols into digital forms. There are a variety of bar codes systems in
use. Some of these are: Universal Product Code, Code 39, POSTNET, etc.

Figure 2.15: Bar Code Reader

24
To guard against theft of items from the super market stores or departmental stores are using
bar code technology, the scanners are able to detect attempts to pass off unscanned items from
the store.

Scanners

There are two types of scanning:

 Optical Character Recognition

 Image Scanning

The optical character recognition refers to devices that can sense marks or characters and
convert it into computer readable form. There are three type of optical character recognition
namely: Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR), Optical Mark-up Readers (OMR) and
Optical character Readers (OCR).

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) is used for processing bank cheques using the
cheque numbers, bank branch number printed with special magnetic ink. The magnetized
characters are read optically or sensed magnetically producing a digitized image, which can be
sorted for processing bank-wise and branch-wise.

Optical markup readers (OMR) reads the presence and location of dark pencil marks on a
special form and converts them into a form which can be processed on a computer. The
common example is the use of OMR Answer Sheet in most competitive examinations where the
candidate is required to darken the appropriate circle to indicate his response to a question.
These sheets are read by an OMR reader and compute the total score.

Image Scanning – To scan drawings, photographs or graphics, the image scanning is used. An
imaging scanner or graphics scanner analyses and converts text, drawings, etc. into digital form
that can then be modified. The scanner examines and translates the images into lines, dots, and
marks in digital form. A related technology is Electronic Imaging that is extensively used in
Multimedia applications. Electronic Imaging is the software controlled mixing of images, using
scanners, digital cameras and advanced graphic computers.

The scanners are of two types:

 Flatbed Scanner are similar to photocopier machines. The scanner is attached to the
computer by a communication cable to an I/O port or USB port. The document to be
scanned is placed on the glass plate on top of the scanner. As a beam of light passes
beneath the glass, the light is reflected off the printed image onto a grid of photosensitive
cells. The image is sensed as shades of gray or in 256 or more colours depending on
the scanner. The number of light sensors in the scanners determines the optical
resolution of the scanner. The higher the resolution, the sharper is the image. The
resolution is measured in terms of dots per inch (dpi). For example 600dpi means, 600
sensors in each inch of the scanning mechanism.

25
 Figure 2.16: Optical Flatbed and HandHeld Scanner

 Handheld scanners are scaled down version of the flatbed scanners but are less
powerful.

VOICE RECOGNITION INPUT DEVICES

To avoid the cumbersome process of typing data or instructions, voice recognition technique is
quite useful. A voice recognition system converts the spoken words into digital form and then
executes them. The conversion is done by comparing the electrical patterns of the voice or
speech with a set of pre-recorded patterns (vocabulary) stored in the computer and the
matching word is displayed on the screen. In such a system, a microphone is attached to the
computer either internally into a slot or externally through a microphone jack. In general, voice
system work only for a single person. They are speaker-dependent. To perform the process,
the user is asked to speak aloud words from a vocabulary having as many as 120,000 or more
words into a microphone. The pronunciation is digitized, analyzed, and stored as a voice
template. The next time the user speaks to the computer, it quickly matches the pattern of the
voice against the voice templates stored in its memory. If it finds a match, it displays the word
or executes the command. The speech is analyzed using both an “acoustic model” and a
“language model.” Using the acoustic model, the speech is compared to speech samples
collected from thousands of people. The result is the best acoustic word match and a short list
of alternates. Using the language model, statistical analysis is used when words sound alike
(“to,” “too,” and “two”) to determine the likelihood that one of them is better than the other in the
current context. For example, a top executive unfamiliar with computer operations want to see
sales data of a specific product. He can speak out the following: Start Excel Spreadsheet
software, Load sales worksheet. The voice produced shall be matched with the stored patterns
and the command would be executed.

The development of such technology is hindered by three basic factors:

 Every person has a different voice, pronunciations and accent.

 The single words or the continuous speech with a little pause between words.
 For better results there is a need to move from mere translation of sounds into
characters to comprehension of spoken words

For example, Dragon is a voice –recognition software that is quite popular for typing documents
through speech or dictation. This comes in a variety of versions such as standard, professional,
etc. and more sophisticated the version, the more flexible it is in accepting the voice.

26
OTHER INPUT DEVICES

Audio Input Devices – Audio-input device are those that can play or record analog sound (like
audio cassette player) and translates them into digital signals for storage and processing on a
computer system. These devices primarily provide input to multimedia PCs. Analog signals
(continuous waves) cannot be handled by a computer directly, therefore it has to be digitized for
storage and processing through a computer. This is done in two ways:

Audio Board – This is an add on card in a computer used for handling analog or audio input i.e.
converting analog sound signals to digital signals and stores them for processing.

MIDI Board – MIDI stands for Musical Instruments Digital Interface. It is also an add-on card
used to create digital music.

OUTPUT DEVICES

Once data has been input using any of the devices discussed above and is processed by the
CPU, we get the results called ‘output’. The output need to be made available in a form we can
use. An output device therefore communicates the result of processing to the users. The output
can be in the form of words, numbers, graphics, sounds, videos, and animations. The output
could take any of the following forms:

 We may want to print our work on a paper. This is called hard copy. This is useful as it
can be directly used and we can carry it with us, share it with others, or file it for later
reference.
 Output can be displayed on the screen. This is called soft copy. The screen, however, is
increasingly becoming the intended final output device for multimedia output.
 Musical output can come through a synthesizer or other musical system.
 Output can be in the form of instructions to another device, such as a robot.

The output devices can therefore principally be divided into two categories:

Hardcopy Output Devices – Hardcopy indicates printed output. The devices, which generate this
type of output, are: Printers, Plotters, Microfilm, Microfiche, etc.

Softcopy Output Devices – Softcopy indicates non-printed form of output or the output that is
intangible and can be directly processed by the computer. The devices, which generate this
type of output, are: Display screen or Monitor, Video output devices, Audio-output devices

VISUAL DISPLAY UNIT (VDU)

It is the most commonly used output device and is also known as Video Display Terminal (VDT)
or a Monitor. It is a device used for the real-time temporary display of computer output data.
There are many kinds of VDUs based on various characteristics such as: type of technology
used, capability to display text and graphics, colours, resolution, size and Video/Graphics
standard used, etc. The Visual display screen can be either a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) or Flat
Panel Displays. Monitors come in different sizes from small screen size for palmtops to medium
size for desktop PCs to extra large size for special purposes like CAD providing more view area.

27
The standard monitor for PCs is generally 14 inches to 16 inches wide measured diagonally
while for special purposes it could be 17 inches or 21 inches wide.

Figure 2.17: Visual Display Unit

Monochrome versus Colour VDU

The VDUs may be either monochrome or colour.

Monochrome. VDUs, which can display only two colours usually black and white, green and
black, are known as monochrome screens.

Colour. The VDUs that are capable of displaying between 16 and 17 million colours using
combinations of basic colours, Red, Green and Blue and are therefore also referred as RGB
displays. Most of the micro-computers are today sold with colour VDUs.

VDU Resolution

The quality of image on the screen depends upon resolution. Since all the characters or images
on the screen are made up of dots, the number of dots or pixels per inch determines the
sharpness or resolution of the image. The sharpness of a display screen is called its resolution.
More the number of pixels per square inch, the better the resolution. It is expressed in terms of
horizontal and vertical pixels as below:

Resolution = horizontal pixels x vertical pixels

For example, a display screen of 800x600 resolution means there are 800 columns and 600
rows of pixels giving 4,80,000 pixels. This screen would be sharper than a screen with 640x480
(3,07,200 pixels) and less sharp than a screen with 1024x768 (7,86,432 pixels).

Video Standard

The computer industry has gone through many generations of change with video standards.
First with the black and white monochrome monitor to the Super VGA 16 million color
configuration. This is determined by the graphics adapter card or video display adapter. A
graphics adapter card is an interface circuit board between computer and monitor. These
adapters come with their own memory chips. A graphics card with 256 kilobytes of memory can
provide only 16 colours while with 1 megabyte can support full 17 million colour shades. The

28
graphics adapter may be either built into the motherboard or may be added as an expansion
card fitting into one of the expansion slots. The adapter card works according to one of the
widely used IBM-compatible standards.

CGA: It stands for Colour Graphics Adapter. It is one of the IBM's earliest hardware video
display standards for use in IBM PCs and lowest resolution standard. CGA can display 80*25 or
40*25 text in 16 colors, 640*200 pixels graphics in 2 colors or 320*200 in 4 colors (IBM PC
video modes 0-6). It is now obsolete.

EGA: It stands for Enhanced Graphics Adapter. It is an IBM PC display standard with a
resolution of 640 x 350 pixels of 16 colours and include all CGA modes. It is a graphic display
specification between CGA and VGA.

VGA: It stands for Video Graphics Array and is a video display standard for PCs that provides a
resolution of 640 x 480 (that is, 480 rows of 640 pixels per row). VGA monitors support 16 to
256 colors depending on resolution. At a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, it will support 16 colours
while at 320 x 200 pixels, it will support as many as 256 colours.

SVGA: It stands for Super Video Graphics Array or Super VGA. It is an extension to VGA that,
at first, supported 800x600 pixel displays but has been expanded to include 1024x768 (and
higher) pixel displays. It supports 256 colours at higher resolution than VGA.

PRINTERS

A printer is an output device that produces paper output also referred to as hard copy. The
output may consist of characters, symbols and graphics on paper. The printers are rated by
their print speeds. There are two kinds of printers on the basis of interaction of print mechanism
with the paper. These are:

 Impact Printers
 Non-Impact Printers

Impact Printers Like typewriters, the impact printers make a physical contact between the
paper and the print mechanism. The printers makes use of print hammer against an inked
ribbon, the ribbon impact the paper and leaves an image on the paper. The print hammer is in
the form of typefaces or the dots. The non-impact printers are slowly displacing the impact
printers. The important types of impact printers are: Dot Matrix Printers (DMP) and Line Printers
(LP). The print speed is measured in terms of character per second (cps) for dot matrix printers
and lines per minute (lpm) for line printers.

Dot Matrix Printers (DMP): A dot matrix printer contains a print head of several print hammers
(small pins generally 9). The pins in the print hammers gets actuated by the electronic digital
signal and strike an inked ribbon against the paper, forming characters or images on the paper.
These characters or images are actually formed by a collection of small dots, one character at a
time. DMPs can print in draft quality or Near Letter Quality (NLQ) modes. The letter quality dot
matrix printers are also available that makes use of a print head of 24 pins. They come in a
variety of speeds such as 180 cps, 200 cps, 240 cps, 300 cps and so on. The width of output
supported by these printers could be either 80 columns or 132 columns and generally makes
use of continuous stationary, although plain paper output is also possible. The printers became
popular because of their low cost, speed and simplicity.

29
 Figure 2.18: Dot Matrix Printer

Line Printers: In large data processing installation, line printers are quite common. These are
impact printers and print one line at a time on continuous sheet of paper that can be either 80
columns or 132 columns. These are of two types: Chain Printers or Band Printers. The speed of
printing is measured in terms of line per minute and generally the speed range varies from 300
lpm to 2400 lpm or more. These are suitable for organizations where heavy print work is
required such as Telephone billing, Electricity billing, Pay Slip Printing, etc.

Figure 2.19: Line Printer

Non-Impact Printers The non-impact printers do not make any physical contact between the
paper and the print mechanism. Instead the printing is done through heat, chemicals, laser or
spraying process. These printers are faster than impact printers because of the absence of
mechanical movement of head and therefore can produce high-speed printing. The print speed
is measured in terms of pages per minute (ppm). The non-impact printers are capable of
producing high quality output (photo-quality). These are of different types based on the
technology used for printing. The common types are: Laser Printers and Inkjet Printers.

Laser Printers: These are the most common type of non-impact printers found in the offices
these days. When the CPU communicates output to the printer for producing hard copy, the
information is converted into a laser beam, which is a narrow beam of light. The laser beam
encodes this information on a photoconductor (photo-sensitive drum). The laser exposed,

30
photosensitive drum attracts particles of magnetically charged ink like toner (powder) which
when transferred to paper forms the full image. This image is then fused to the paper by heat
and pressure by rolling the drum over the paper. These are faster than DMP and Inkjet printers.
Unlike DMPs, the Laser Printer prints one whole page at a time. These are available in various
print speeds ranging from 4 ppm to over 200 ppm. The laser printers provide sharp, high quality
images of both text and graphics.

The postscript printers make use of page description language for describing the shape and
position of text and image to the printer. This language has become a standard for laser
printing. HP is a leading manufacturer of Laser Printers in the world. They make use of PCL
(Printer Control Language) that provides resolution and speed similar to those of Postscript
printers. The colour laser printers are also available but are far more costly as compared to the
black laser printers.

Figure 2.20: Laser Printer

Inkjet Printers: The inkjet technology makes use of spray of tiny streams of ink from holes in the
print mechanism to print characters and images. The spray consists of electrically charged
droplets of ink from four nozzles through holes in a matrix at high speed onto paper. The major
advantage is the capability to produce multi-colour output. The colour printing is possible by
using a colour ink cartridge that can produce various shades by mixing colours in the cartridge
in different proportions. The speed varies from 4 ppm in older printers to even up to 20 ppm.
The speed gets reduced to almost half for colour output. For example HP DJ 810 printer is a
desktop printer, prints up to 8 ppm in black and 5 ppm in colour with a resolution of 1200 dpi.
The print output is sensitive to water and light and therefore care should be taken not to expose
them to light and water. Apart from hard copy output, the inkjet printers can also be used for
printing images on fabric by using special type of paper (transfer or freezing paper). The major
manufacturers of this type of printers are HP and Epson.
 

Figure 2.21: Inkjet Printer

31
A third category called “Thermal Printers” also exists. These printers make use of heat elements
to produce images by burning dots onto heat sensitive paper.

Plotters

It is a specialized hard copy device that can produce high quality graphical images in a variety
of colours. There are three kinds of plotters: Pen plotters, Electrostatic plotters and Thermal
plotters.

PHOTOGRAPHIC OUTPUT (Microfilm/Microfiche)

This type of output is generated in the form of high-resolution image on the photographic film. It
has the capacity to record large quantities of data in readable character form in a relatively small
space. The principal disadvantage of photographic output is that we need a reader with data
lookup capabilities to read these images. These are commonly used in libraries to store back
volume data or catalogue data on microfilm/microfiche, which can be accessed with the help of
a reader. This may take two forms:

Microfilm: It is an ordinary film in one of the standard widths, generally 6mm. It is a high-
density film and is used to store data for future reference.

Microfiche: Instead of a film, it is a sheet of film generally 105 mm by 148 mm, containing a
rectangular pattern of pages. The data image is reduced in size to store more data. Special
viewers are required to magnify a page at a time in readable size. Normal printouts can be
photographed onto microfiche or microfilm.

AUDIO OUTPUT DEVICES

These are the devices that can generate voice or voice-like sounds, music and other sounds as
output. These devices are parts of a multimedia system. The voice-output devices convert
digital data from the CPU into voice or speech like sounds. The technology used is: Speech
Coding and Speech Synthesis. The sound-output devices generate digitized sounds that are
non-verbal for example, beeps, chirps, musical tones, etc.

VIDEO OUTPUT DEVICES

One of the examples of this is High Definition Television commonly called HDTV. The basic
concept behind high-definition television is actually not to increase the definition per unit area
but rather to increase the percentage of the visual field contained by the image. This system
provides enhanced video and crispy clear pictures not available on normal television. It also
offers better colour and high quality audio. Videoconferencing is another application using the
video-output. In this people in different geographical locations can conduct a meeting by seeing
and hearing each other using the IT equipments.

32
 SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISES

Short Answer Questions

1. What are the various basis for computer classification?

2. What are the supercomputers generally used for and why?

3. List the distinguishing features of various types of microcomputers.

4. How is data represented in a computer system?

5. How data is processed in a computer system?

6. What are the primary components of a CPU? List their major functions.

7. What is the role of registers in computing?

8. What are MIPS and Megaflops?

9. What factors determine the speed of a microprocessor?

10. Distinguish between RISC and CISC.

11. What is a computer bus? List its various types and their functions.

12. Name various types of main memory. Compare the primary memory with secondary
memory in terms of speed, cost, and capacity.

13. Distinguish between primary memory and cache memory.

14. What do you mean by ROM? Why do we need it?

15. What do you mean by ‘Plug and Play’?

16. What is the utility of a USB Port?

17. What are the primary types of input devices? Give examples.

18. What is a Point-of-Sale terminal?

19. Distinguish between OMR, OCR and MICR.

20. What do you understand by the term ‘MIDI’?

21. What features distinguish one monitor from the other?

22. What do you mean by resolution of a VDU? How is it expressed?

23. Distinguish between CGA, VGA and SVGA.

33
 24. How Impact Printers are different from non-impact printers?

Critical Thinking Questions/Projects

1. Visit a computer store or scan through various computer advertisements or log onto
websites of Intel and other chip manufacturers and find which microprocessors are
currently available. Check on their speed, price, and other specific features. Prepare a
report.

2. List down the specifications of a microcomputer (PC) you would like to have for yourself.

3. The microprocessors of higher speeds are being developed at a fast pace. What impact
do you feel it has on the software industry?

4. Make a list of all the input and output devices you find in various places like banks,
hospitals, libraries, departmental store, commercial organizations, entertainment stores,
airlines office, etc.

5. Visit a computer store or visit some web sites and find out the various type of non-impact
printers available. Compare them in terms of technology, prices and the quality.

34