Basic Terms

• Device: Compulsory equipments which are

required to perform basic operation of computer
system are called devices or accessories.
Examples: Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor
• Peripherals : The additional equipments which
are required to perform additional jobs in
Computer system are called peripherals.
Examples: Scanner, Printer, OCR, etc
• Media: The storage equipments which are used
to store data/programs in computer system are
called media.
Examples: Hard disk, Floppy Disk, CD, DVD, etc
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 Input Devices
The devices that are used to enter data and instructions into the computer
are called input devices. In old computers, the punched card readers, paper
tape readers were used as input devices. Now-a-days the most commonly
used input devices are Keyboard and Mouse. The input into the computer can
be entered:
• Through keyboard (by typing characters).
• By selecting commands (icons) on the screen and then clicking with
mouse.
• By pressing finger on a touch screen.
• By speaking into a microphone.
• By sending image through digital camera.
The input devices are the eyes and ears of computers. The commonly used
input devices are:
Keyboard

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 Keyboard
• It is just like electronic typewriter which is used for
entering data/instructions to computer.
• It consists special electronic circuit called keyboard
encoder that helps to identify the pressed key and it
reports the key information to CPU.
• It consists different types of keys: alphanumeric keys,
functional keys, punctuation keys, special character
keys, multimedia keys, etc

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 Keyboard

Types of Keyboards

• IBM Keyboard (XT/AT)

• Enhanced Keyboard
• ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) Keyboard
• Multimedia Keyboard
 Mouse
Optical Mouse Mechanical Mouse

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 Mechanical Mouse
• A mechanical mouse consists a rubber ball on its
base.
• The ball spins a pair of orthogonally arranged
toothed wheels.
• The wheels interrupt the light path from LED (Light
Emitting Diode) towards light sensor devices.
• Thus, the sensors report the position of the screen.
• Moreover, it consists left, right button to click the
object and a roller to scroll page.
 Optical Mouse
• It uses laser beam or LED on its base and a light sensor
device.
• It is used on special pad having alternate gridlines.
• The amount of reflected light from the pad is sensed by
the sensor and report to the CPU.
• It also consists left, right button to click object on
screen and roller to scroll page.
Track Ball
 Track Ball
• Track ball is also a pointing device just like mechanical
mouse.
• It consists a ball which can spin to move the cursor on
the screen.
• Moreover it also consists 2/3 buttons to select object
on screen.
• A thin track ball is also used on Notebook or Cell phone.
Joystick

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 Joystick
• It is also a pointing device to move the cursor or to
control object on screen.
• It consists a movable lever with few buttons.
• Lever helps to control the cursor buttons help to select
items on screen.
• Mostly used in games and CAM (Computer Aided
Manufacturing)

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Light Pen

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 Light Pen
• Pencil shaped device used to select screen position by
detecting light from it.
• It consists light sensor on its head that measures the
intensity of light on screen and reports the screen
position information to CPU.
• It is not so popular because sometimes it gives false
readings due to the background light in the room.
• It does not scan the dark object too.

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Digitizer Tablet

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 Digitizer Tablet
• It is used to enter drawings or sketches into computer.
• It consists electronic plate called tablet and pen shaped
device to draw sketches on the tablet.
• Tablet digitizes the sketches and sends information to
CPU.
• It is used in the field of engineering, architecture and
CAD (Computer Aided Designing).

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Scanner

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 Scanner
• A scanner is used to scan picture, graphics and text by using
shining laser beam on to the picture or graphics from paper.
• It digitizes each pixel from the picture by measuring intensity
of reflected laser beam with the help of CCD (Charged
Coupled Device or Photocell).
• Photocell takes the information of each pixel and report the
information to computer.
• RGB filters are used in color scanner to separate colors.
• Different types of scanners: Flatbed, Sheet fed, handheld,
drum scanner.

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OCR (Optical Character Reader)

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 OCR (Optical Character Reader)
• It is used to scan characters or text from paper.
• The characters must be in standard format.
• It consists photo sensitive electronic equipment that
scans characters and a special software convert them
into text format.
• Now, OCR facility is built in digital scanner.

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OMR (Optical Mark Reader)

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 OMR (Optical Mark Reader)

• It is used to scan the dark mark being made by pencil

or pen.
• Mostly used to solve the problems with multiple
choice question and answer.
• Accuracy of OMR depends on the dark mark being
made properly or not?
• It measures the intensity of reflected light from the
dark spot and mach the area with key available in
computer.

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MICR (Magnetic Ink Character
Reader)

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 MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Reader)

• MICR is used in banks, colleges and university to scan

the characters written by using magnetic ink.
• Mostly checks or certificates are scanned by using MICR
to check the authentications.
• Magnetic Ink can store some secrete information on
paper which can only scan by MICR and software
decodes the secret.
• Same principle is used in credit/debit cards.

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O-BCR (Optical Bar Code Reader)

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 OBCR (Optical Bar Code Reader)
• Almost all products use barcodes to keep the
information about the product.
• It consists numbers of vertical bars with different
spaces and thickness.
• UPC (Universal Product Code) is the most commonly
used barcodes which consists 13 digits.
• First 6 digits for the product and next 6 digits for the
manufacturer.
• BCR scans these information reports to computer.

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Touch Pad

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 Touch Pad

• A small touch sensitive screen in notebook to control

the cursor on screen is called Touch pad.
• The working principle touch pad is same as touch
panel.
• Moreover it also consists few buttons to select an
object on screen.
• The user slides his/her finger tip across the window to
move the cursor on the screen.
• When the window is tapped, it works as the clicking
of the mouse button.
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 Voice Input System
• Computer’s sound card digitizes the sound waves
form microphone and give the information to
computer.
• Some computer has voice input system which can
take voice as an input and interprets in text.
• The accuracy of such device is very poor.

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 Webcam and Digital Camera

• Special type of digital camera that is used while

netsurfing is called webcam or web camera.
• Generally its quality is comparatively lower than
other digital camera.
• A digital camera capture the images in digital
form and video which is the digitized form and
can be stored in computers.
• It can take the photo and load them directly from
the camera digitally to a main storage or
secondary storage device.
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 Smart Card Reader
• Smart Card is digital card just like credit or
debit card that consists electronic circuits
also called IC.
• It is used for various purposes such as
storing personal information, driving license,
citizenship, medical information, ID for the
institutions, etc.
• Smart Card Reader is special electronic
device which is used to read the information
of the smart card and computer software
verify the card’s information

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Output Devices
Output Devices
The processed input data into a useful form is called output. The computer
processes the given input data and gives the output. Therefore, devices that are
used to get output from a computer in readable form are called output devices.
When input data is processed, computer generates several types of output,
depending upon the hardware and software used and the requirements of the user.
The user views output on a screen print it on the printer or hear it through speakers
or headsets.
A number of output devices are available. Some commonly used output devices are
video display units (VDU) and printers. Output is normally classified as:
1. Softcopy Output Device
2. Hardcopy Output Device
 Softcopy Output Device
The output received on the display screen or in the audio or video form is
called softcopy output. It is stored in computer. This kind of output is not
tangible and it cannot be touched. The most popular and commonly used
softcopy output device is display screen.
It is useful for text, graphics, audio, video or animation etc.

Monitors
The monitor is a popular and most commonly used output device. The
monitor consists of a screen and the electronic components that produce
the output on the screen temporarily. Monitors can be divided into
following categories.
1. Monochrome monitors: Monochrome means information displays in
two colors, one color (such as white, black, blue, amber or gray) for
fore ground and one color for background, which is usually black.
2. Grayscale Monitors: Grayscale monitors are types of monochrome
monitors. These monitors often use gray scaling to enhance the quality
of graphics. They display the output using many shades of gray from
white to black, which provide better contrast on the images.

3. Color monitors: Color monitors are used to display output in

different colors (i.e. from 16 colors to 16.7 million colors). These
monitors are sometimes called RGB (Red, Green, Blue) monitors. Today,
most of the personal computers use color monitors.
Video Display
Unit(VDU) or
Monitor
• A. CRT Monitor(Cathode Ray Tube)
• It is most commonly used monitor based on
cathode ray tube i.e. CRT
• The RGB electron guns emits high speed
streams of electrons that strike the Phosphor
coated screen and produces visible light.
• The image is redrawn many times to give un-
flickering images
• Shadow mask and RGB filters are used to
separate colors .
 Demerits of CRT
Merits of CRT monitormonitors
• It is comparatively cheaper than • It requires huge amount of
other monitors.
power.
• It has better brightness. • It is larger and heavier.
• It has the largest viewing angle • It cannot be used in portable
of almost 180 degrees.
computing devices.
• It has better graphics quality.
• It is not better for the human
• It is comparatively durable.
eye due to large radiation.
 Liquid Crystalline
Display(LCD)
• LCD is the most common flat-panel monitor.
• It creates images with a special kind of liquid crystal
that is normally transparent but becomes opaque
when charged with electricity.
• The liquid crystalline material is sandwiched
between two glasses or plastic plates.
• . The front plate is transparent and the back is
reflective.
• It consumes low voltage and power consumptions.
• The user should sit in front the monitor, if he/she
sits with the angle, contents are not visible.
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• Merits of LCD • Demerits of LCD
• It is smaller and lighter. • It has limited the viewing angle
• It can be used in portable compared to other monitors.
computing devices. • It is expensive than CRT monitor.
• It has low power requirement as • It has low brightness. So, it is
compared to CRT monitors. difficult to view in a brighter
• It is better for the human eye environment.
due to its low brightness and low
radiation.
 Light Emitting Diode (LED)

• LED monitor contains an array of light

emitting diodes as a video display.
• The diodes are turned on or off to
display the output.
• Initially, it was used only for simple
digital display like in the calculator,
digital watch.
• At present it is the popular monitor for
television set, desktop PC, laptop,
mobile phones, etc.
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• Merits of LED • Demerits of LED
• It is smaller and lighter. • It is an expensive monitor.
• It can be used in portable • It has low brightness as
computing devices. compared to CRT monitor.
• It has low power requirement. • It is difficult to maintain.
• It is better fro human eyes similar
to LCD monitors.
• It provides better brightness as
compared to LCD and plasma
monitors.
 Classification of Printers

Printers

Impact Non Impact

Printers Printers

Thermal
Dot Matrix Line Printer Ink Jet
Printer

Daisy Wheel
Laser
Printer
Impact Printer
• The mechanism resembling that of a typewriter.
• An impact printer forms character or image by striking a mechanism
such as a print hammer or wheel against and inked ribbon, leaving an
image on paper.
• Dot matrix printer, daisy-wheel printer are the example of impact
printer.
Characteristics of the impact printer
• It prints by physically touching the printing material.
• It used mechanical method for printing.
• It is noisy.
• It is slower for printing.
• The printing quality is not good as from non- impact printer.
• It is usually single colored.
• It can produce multiple copies at the same time by using carbon paper.
• It used ink ribbon for printing.
• It is rarely used at present.
 Non-Impact Printer
• It is faster and quieter than the impact printer because they have
fewer moving parts.
• It forms characters and images without making direct physical contact
between printing mechanism and paper.
• It is faster than impact printer.
• The disadvantages of non- impact printer is that, it produces single
copy of the text where as the impact printer can produces multiple
copies of text by using carbon paper.
• Example: laser printer and ink-jet printers.
 Impact Printer Non- Impact Printer
1. It uses electromechanical mechanism that causes hammers 1. It doesn’t use electro mechanical printing rather than it uses
or pins to strike against a ribbon and paper to print the text. the thermal, chemical, leaser beam or ink jet technology for
printing the text and image.
2. The efficiency of the impact printer is less as compared to 2. It has higher efficiency because electrical energy is not
non-impact printer because it uses electric energy which is wasted.
further converted into heat and sound.

3. It is slow while printing. 3. It is faster while printing.

4. It uses force for printing and produces more sound while 4. It doesn’t use force and hence produces less sound while
printing. printing.

5. It cannot print graphics perfectly. 5. It can print graphics perfectly.

6. It can produce multiple copies at the same time using carbon 6. It cannot produce multiple copies at the same time. Each
paper. paper has to be printed our separately.

7. It is usually single colored. 7. It can be single or multi colored.

8.It uses ink ribbon for printing. 8. It uses liquid or powder ink for printing.
9. It is rarely used at present. 9. It is popularly used at present.
10. Example: Dot matrix printer, electronic typewriter, daisy 10. Example: ink jet printer, laser printer, etc.
wheel, etc.
a. Dot Matrix Printers: Dot matrix printers produce an image by hammering
a column of 9 ,18 or 24 pins against a ribbon. Characters are produced as
the print head (which contains the pins) moves across the page. This is
very old printing technology, but it is popular in most of the billing
departments.
•
• Merits of Dot matrix printer • Demerits of dot matrix printer
• It can print both images and text • It is noisy and slower.
of any sizes or fonts. • It has low printing quality.
• It is cheaper and has low • It is single colored.
operating cost.
• It can print multiples of copies at
the same time.
• It is appropriate for small volume
printing.
 Daisy Wheel Printers:
• Daisy wheel printers are rarely used any more. A daisy wheel printer
hammers character stamps (like those on typewriters) against a
ribbon to produce high quality text output. The character patterns are
all arranged around the edge of a wheel. When a letter is to be
printed, the wheel rotates so that the correct letter is against the
ribbon.
Contd…
c. Line Printers: Dot matrix and daisy wheel printers both print only one character at
a time. For that reason they are called Character Printers. In contrast, a line
printer prints a whole line (typically 80 or 132 characters) of text at a time. These
printers are very fast, the fastest can print 3,000 lines of text per minute. The line
printers may be Chain or Drum (Band) type.
Daisy Wheel Printer
• Merits:
• It has better printing quality than dot matrix printer.
• It can print multiple copies at a same time using carbon paper.
• Demerits:
• It is noisy and slower.
• It has low printing quality compared to non-impact printer.
• It is single colored.
• It cannot print images. It can only print only text of fixed size and font.
• It is not appropriate for large volume printing.
Line Printer
• Merit
• It can print a complete line of text at a time. So it is faster for printing.
• It is appropriate for continuous printing.
• It can print multiple copies at a same time using carbon paper.
• Demerits
• It is noisy and slower.
• It has low printing quality compared to non-impact printers.
• It is single colored.
• It cannot print images.
• It can only print text of fixed size and fonts.
1. Non-Impact Printers:
• Non-impact printers do not use hammering action. Because there is
no hammering action, non-impact printers are very quiet but cannot
print multiple copies using carbon paper.
• The cost of printers are varies from low to high according to its quality
and manufacturing company. It is a present mostly used printing
technology. The non-impact printers can be Inkjet, Laser, and
Thermal.
Ink Jet Printers
• It is a non impact printer. Like dot matrix, ink-jet printer also form
images with little dots, but the dots are much smaller and more
numerous.
• It spray small, electrically charged droplets of ink from four nozzles
through holes in a matrix at a high speed onto paper.
• It can match the speed of dot matrix printer (120 – 240 characters per
second or 1 to 4 page per minutes.)
Ink Jet Printers
• Merits:
• It produces low noise and is faster for printing compared to impact printers.
• It is cheaper to buy.
• It is appropriate for low volume printing.
• It can be single or multi colored.
• It has better printing quality.
• It can print image and text of any size and font.
• Demerits:
• It has expensive operating cost due to expensive ink.
• It cannot print multiple copies at the same time.
• It is not appropriate for continuously printing.
 Laser Printers:
• Laser printers are called Page Printers because they print a whole page at a
time.
• Laser printer operates in the similar manner as a photocopy machine.
• It produces high quality print.
• The images are created on a drum, treated with a magnetically charged ink
powder known as toner, and then transferred from drum to paper.
• They produce sharp, crisp images of both text and graphics.
• They are quieter and faster than dot matrix printer.
• They can print 4-20 pages per minute for individual micro computers.
Merits of Laser printer
• It produces low noise and is faster for printing compared to impact
printer.
• It has low operating cost.
• It is appropriate for large volume printing.
• It can be single or multi-colored.
• It has better printing quality.
• It can print images and text of any size or font.
Demerits of laser printer
• It is expensive to buy.
• It cannot print multiple copies at a same time.
• It is not appropriate for continuous printing.
 Thermal Printers:
• Thermal printer uses colored waxes and heat to produce images by
burning dots on special heat sensitive paper.
• It can provide highest-quality desktop color printing available.
• However they are expensive and require expensive paper.
• They are not used for high volume printing.
Merits of thermal printer
• It produces low noise and is faster for printing.
• It can be single or multi coloured.
• It has better printing quality.
• It can print image and text of any size.
Demerits
• It is expensive to buy.
• It’s printing cost or running cost is high.
• It cannot print multiple copies at the same time.
• It is not appropriate for continuous printing.
INTERFACES
• Interface is a boundary across which two independent systems meet
and interact or communicate with each other.
• Therefore, it is simply a point from where the communication can be
possible.
• In computer, there are different types of interfaces like user interface,
software interface and hardware interface.
• we will concentrate on the hardware interface alone.
Contd..
• Hardware interface is the wires, plugs and sockets that hardware devices use
to communicate with each other, and electrical signals that are passed
across them.
• In short, it is a jack (port) for connecting different peripheral devices.
• Input to the system and output from the system is possible because of the
interface.
• Hardware interfaces exist in computing systems between many of the
components such as the various buses, storage devices, other I/O devices,
etc.
• USB, FireWire, Ethernet, parallel and serial ports as well as Compact Flash
cards, PCI cards and PC Cards are all examples of hardware interface (devices
connecting to other devices).
Serial port
Serial ports are a type of computer interface that
complied with the RS-232 standard.
It is serial communication physical interface
through which information is transferred in or out
one bit at a time.
Each byte is broken up into a series of eight bits,
hence the term serial port. Serial ports are one of
the oldest types of interface standards. Before
internal modems became commonplace, external
modems were connected to computers via serial
ports, also known as communication or "COM"
ports. Computer mice and even keyboards also
used serial ports.
Parallel Port
Parallel port is a port on the PC that handles a data stream in a parallel mode. On
PCs, the parallel port uses a 25-pin RS-232 connector (type DB-25) and is used to
connect printers, computers and other devices that need relatively high bandwidth.
Most personal computers have both a parallel port and at least one serial port.
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
USB stands for ‘Universal Serial Bus’. A USB port is a standard cable
connection interface on personal computers and consumer electronics
that works universally. USB ports allow stand-alone electronic devices to
be connected via cables to a computer or to each other. Now, The USB
connector ports are available as standard on virtually every computing
machine manufactured in the past eight years.
Contd..
USB is an external bus standard that supports data transfer rate of 12
Mbps. USB also supports plug and play installation. USB has become
widespread, and is expected to completely replace serial and parallel
port.
USB currently exists in three standards: 1.0, 1.1, and the high-speed
2.0. The original USB 1.0 was relatively slow, transferring in 1.5 Mbps.
Revision 1.1 USB jumped up to 12 Mbps. ‘High-Speed USB’ or USB 2.0,
now the most common interface around, boasts theoretical speeds of
up to 480Mbps. USB 2.0 is a newer implementation of the USB
standard and was jointly developed by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent,
Microsoft, NEC and Philips.
 IEEE 1394
IEEE 1394 is a personal computer / consumer
electronic serial bus interface standard offering
high-speed communications. The IEEE 1394
standard for the High Performance Serial Bus
defines a serial data transfer protocol. The
capabilities of the 1394 bus are sufficient to
support a variety of high-end digital audio/video
applications, such as consumer audio/video device
control and signal routing, home networking,
nonlinear DV editing, and 32-channel (or more)
digital audio mixing.
 Network Interface Cards (NIC)
Network Interface Cards can be a network card, network adapter,
LAN Adapter or NIC (network interface card). They are a piece of
computer hardware designed to allow computers to communicate
over a computer network. It is used for fault communication via
cable. Data is transmitted over a cable network. The NIC connects
computers and other devices such as printers. Many modern
motherboards have NICs built in by default. This interface can be
wire or wireless.

Personal System 2 (PS/2)

PS/2 ports (now outdated) were for connecting peripherals
such as your keyboard and mouse to the computer. PS/2
based mice and keyboards have now been replaced by
USB ports as the popular standard. This trend for USB over
PS/2 started in circa 2004.
• IEEE - 1394 Features
 Real-time data transfer for multimedia applications
 100 - 200 - 400 - 800 Mbits/s data rates
 Live connection/disconnection without data loss or interruption
(hot-plug)
 Automatic configuration supporting "plug and play"
 Freeform network topology allowing mixing branches and daisy-
chains
 No separate line terminators required
 Guaranteed bandwidth assignments for real-time applications