Chapter 1 – Part 2 Computer Hardware

Defining Computer Hardware

The computer hardware is the equipment and devices that make up a computer system as
opposed to the programs that are used on it. A digital computer is not a single machine: rather, it
is a system composed of distinct elements.
● input devices
● central processing unit
● primary storage devices
● secondary storage devices
● output devices
● communication devices
In order for information to flow through a computer system and be in a form suitable for
processing, all symbols, pictures, or words must be reduced to a string of binary digits. A binary
digit is called a bit. It represents the smallest unit of data in a computer system. It can only have
one of two states (e.g. true or false, on or off), represent ed by 0 or 1. A byte is a string of eight
(8) bits, used to store one number or character in a computer system.
Computers continue to become smaller, faster, more reliable, less costly to purchase and
maintain, and more interconnected within computer networks. input devices are directed toward
direct data input that ids more natural and easy to use, while output devices are geared toward
direct output methods that communicate naturally, quickly, and clearly.
A. INPUT DEVICES
Input devices enable a computer user to enter data, commands, and programs into the CPU.
Included in this category are the following.
● Keyboard – This is commonly known as the QWERTY keyboard, named after the six
leftmost characters in the top row of alphabetic characters on most keyboards—the standard
layout of most typewriters and computer keyboards. An alternative layout, the Dvorak keyboard,
is considered more efficient, but the QWERTY keyboard has the advantage of familiarity. This is
the most common input device. Information typed at the typewriter-like keyboard is translated by
the computer into recognizable patterns.
● Mouse – This was invented by Douglas Englebert and was popularized by its inclusion as
standard equipment with the Apple Macintosh. It helps a user navigate through a graphical
computer interface. It is generally mapped so that an on-screen cursor may be controlled by
moving the mouse across a flat surface. There are many variations on mouse design, but they all
work in a similar manner. Some mouse units feature a scroller, which provides a better way of
scrolling through documents vertically and/or horizontally. The latter optomechanical mouse
eliminates the need for many of the wear-related repairs and maintenance necessary with purely
mechanical mice.
● Joystick – This performs the same function as the mouse. It is favored for computer games. A
joystick usually has a square or rectangular plastic base to which is attached a vertical stem.
Control buttons are located on the base and sometimes on top of the stem. The stem can be
moved in all directions to control the movement of an object on the screen. The buttons activate
various software
features, generally producing on-screen events. A joystick is usually a relative pointing device,
moving an object on the screen when the stem is moved from the centre and stopping the
movement when the stem is released. In industrial control applications, the joystick can also be
an absolute pointing device, with each position of the stem mapped to a specific on-screen
location.
● Trackball – This can be roughly described as a mouse on its back. It consists of a ball resting
on two rollers at right angles to each other, which translate the ball's motion into vertical and
horizontal movement on the screen. It typically has one or more buttons to initiate other actions.
The only functional difference between a mechanical mouse and a trackball is in how the ball is
moved. With a trackball, the housing is stationary, and the ball is rolled with the hand. A
trackball is useful for fine work because the user can exert fingertip control. Another major
advantage of a trackball is that it takes up little desktop surface. This replaces the mouse on some
laptop computers.
● Graphics tablet – This pointing device is also called a digitizing tablet. It is a flat plastic
rectangle with subsurface electronics, used in conjunction with a pointing device in many
engineering and design applications as well as in illustration work. When a pointing device, like
a puck (or even the finger), is moved on the surface of the tablet, the location of the device is
translated to a specific on-screen cursor position.
● Puck – This is often used in engineering applications. It is a mouse-like device with buttons
for selecting items or choosing commands and a clear plastic section extending from one end
with cross hairs printed on it. The intersection of the cross hairs on the puck points to a location
on the graphics tablet, which in turn is mapped to a specific location on the screen. Since the
puck's cross hairs are on a transparent surface, a drawing can easily be traced by placing it
between the graphics tablet and the puck and moving the cross hairs over the lines of the
drawing.
● Scanner – This input device uses light-sensing equipment to read information in paper or
another medium, and translate the pattern of light and dark (or color) into a digital signal that can
be manipulated by either optical character recognition software or graphics software. A
frequently encountered type of scanner is flatbed, meaning that the scanning device moves across
or reads across a stationary document. Another type of flatbed scanner uses a scanning element
placed in a stationary housing above the document. Other scanners work by pulling in sheets of
paper, which are scanned as they pass over a stationary scanning mechanism, as in the common
office fax machine. Some specialized scanners, like barcode readers, work with a standard video
camera, translating the video signal into a digital signal for computer processing. Another
popular type of scanner is the hand-held scanner, a scanner held in the user’s hand is moved over
the document to be scanned.
● Light pen – This is a pointing device in which the user holds a wand, which is attached to the
computer, up to the screen and selects items or chooses commands on the screen (the equivalent
of a mouse click) either by pressing a clip on the side of the light pen or by pressing the light pen
against the surface of the screen. The light pen doesn't require a special screen or screen coating,
as does a touch screen, but its disadvantage is that holding the pen up for an extended length of
time is tiring to the user.
● Touch screen – This is a computer screen designed or modified to recognize the location of a
touch on its surface. By touching the screen, the user can make a selection or move a cursor.. The
touch screen's popularity with personal-computer users has been limited because users must hold
their hands in midair to point at the screen, which is prohibitively tiring over extended periods.
Also, touch screens do not offer high resolution—the user is not able to touch only a specific
point on the screen. Touch screens are, however, immensely popular in applications such as
information kiosks because they offer pointing control without requiring any movable hardware
and because touching the screen is intuitive
● Card reader – This is a device that can acquire and process information stored in electronic
cards like ATM cards, ID cards, special privilege cards, credit and debit cards, and so on. It
commonly found in commercial establishments where transaction cards are swiped to obtain
necessary information about the customer or client.
● Voice recognition system – It may be any device and software which together, take spoken
words and translate them into digital signals for the computer. A typical device used in speech
recognition is a microphone. Speech recognition is the ability of a computer to understand the
spoken word for the purpose of receiving commands and data input from the speaker. This
method is also fairly reliable provided the speaker's speech patterns are consistent. Speech
recognition also allows full speech-to-text conversion. Storage devices can also be used to input
data into the processing unit. An example is the transfer of data from an external storage device
to the computer, such as an external disk drive, digital camera with stored images, or any other
external storage device.
B. CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
The central processing unit (CPU) is the part of the computer system where manipulation of data,
(symbols, numbers, and letters) occurs. It also controls other parts of the system.
The CPU may be a single chip or a series of chips that perform arithmetic and logical
calculations and that time and control the operations of the other elements of the system.
Contemporary CPUs use semiconductor chips called microprocessors, common in personal
computers, which integrate all the memory, logic, and control circuits for an entire CPU onto a
single chip. The development of the microprocessor was made possible through miniaturization
and integration techniques. The speed and performance of a computer’s microprocessor help
determine a computer’s processing power. These are based on the following.
● Word length – This refers to the number of bits that the computer can process at one time
(e.g. a 64-bit chip can process 64 bits, or 8 bytes in a single cycle). The larger the word length,
the greater the computer’s speed.
● Cycle speed – This is measured in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz). This indicates the
number of cycles per second (e.g. a 500 MHz Intel Pentium III processor will have 500 million
cycles per second).
● Data bus width – This acts as a superhighway between the CPU, primary storage, and other
devices, which determines how much data can be moved at one time. the 8088 chip having 16-bit
word length but only an 8-bit data bus width can process data in 16-bit chunks but could only be
moved 8 bits at a time)
OUTPUT DEVICES
Output devices enable the user to see the results of the computer’s calculations or data
manipulations. They present data in a form the user of the computer can understand.
The most common output device can deliver either the soft copy or the hard copy of the data.
Devices that render soft copy are the following
● Video display unit (VDU) – This is commonly known as the monitor, which displays
characters and graphics on a television-like screen. It usually has a cathode ray tube like an
ordinary television set, but small, portable computers use liquid crystal displays (LCDs) or
electroluminescent screens.
● Audio output devices – These are responsible for the sound that the user hears from the
computer. These include the sound card and the speakers. The sound card is a computer circuit
board that allows the computer to receive sound in digital form and reproduce it through
speakers.
● External storage devices – These include floppy disks, compact disks,, external hard disks, etc.
● Interactive multimedia – This is the combination of audio, video, and text on high-capacity
compact discs. CD-I includes such features as image display and resolution, animation, special
effects, and audio. Interactive multimedia includes the following materials.

⮚ e-books and e-newspapers

⮚ electronic classroom presentation technologies

⮚ full motion videoconferencing

⮚ imaging

⮚ graphic design tools

⮚ video and voice mail

⮚ interactive web pages

⮚ multimedia web sites (they render digitized music and videos)

There are only two output devices known to reindeer hard copy of data.
● Printers – These are computer peripherals that put text or a computer-generated image on
paper or on another medium, such as a transparency. Printers can be categorized in several
different ways. The most common distinction is impact and non-impact.

⮚ Impact printers physically strike the paper and are exemplified by pin dot-matrix printers and
daisy-wheel printers.

⮚ Non-impact printers include every other type of print mechanism, including thermal, ink-jet,
and laser printers.
 Computer-output microform – These are outpot devices that can render microscopic format
of documents.

PRIMARY STORAGE

Primary storage refers to temporary storage of data and program instructions during processing.
It is also known as internal storage since it stores data in the computer memory. There are two
types.
● RAM (Random Access Memory) – These are chips that are mounted directly on the
computer’s main circuit board, or in chips mounted on peripheral cards that plug into the
computer’s main circuit board. They are called so because the computer can directly access any
randomly chosen location in the same amount of time. These RAM chips consist of millions of
switches that are sensitive to changes in electric current. So-called static RAM chips hold their
data as long as current flows through the circuit, whereas dynamic RAM (DRAM) chips need
high or low voltages applied at regular intervals—every two milliseconds or so—if they are not
to lose their information. RAM is used for short-term storage of data or program instructions. It
is volatile – meaning its contents will be lost when the computer’s electric supply is turned off.

● ROM (Read-Only Memory) – These chips form commands, data, or programs that the
computer needs to function correctly. RAM chips are like pieces of paper that can be written on,
erased, and used again; ROM chips are like a book, with its words already set on each page.
ROM is non-volatile. ROM can only be read from it; it cannot be written to. ROM chips come
from manufacturers with programs already burned in or stored. ROM is used in general-purpose
computers to store important or frequently-used programs. Like RAM, ROM chips are linked by
circuitry to the CPU.
Primary storage has three main functions.
● They store all or part of the software program that is being executed.
● They store the operating system programs that manage the operation of he computer.
● They hold the data that the program is using.

SECONDARY STORAGE

Secondary storage stores data and instructions when they are not used in processing. Relatively,
they are long-term, non-volatile storage of data outside the CPU or primary storage. Secondary
storage is also known as external storage because it does not use the computer memory to store
data. External storage devices, which may actually be located within the computer housing, are
external to the main circuit board. These devices store data as charges on a magnetically
sensitive medium such as a magnetic tape or, more commonly, on a disk coated with a fine layer
of metallic particles.

The most popular secondary storage devices include the following.

● Magnetic disks – This broad category includes the following.

⮚ Floppy disk – The floppy disk in normal use stores about 800 KB or about 1.4 MB. ⮚ ZIP disk
– A ZIP disk is much like a floppy disk but has a greater capacity.
⮚ Hard disk – Hard, or “fixed”, disks cannot be removed from their disk-drive cabinets, which
contain the electronics to read and write data on to the magnetic disk surfaces. Hard disks
currently used with personal computers can store from several hundred megabytes to several
gigabytes.
⮚ RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) – This is a disk storage technology to boost
disk performance by packing more than 100 smaller disk drives with a control chip and a
specialized software in a single large unit to deliver data over multiple paths simultaneously.

● Optical disks – These disks use the same laser techniques that are used to create audio
compact discs (CDs). Under this genre are:

⮚ CD-ROM – This is an acronym for compact disc read-only memory, a form of storage
characterized by high capacity (roughly 600 MB) and the use of laser optics rather than magnetic
means for reading data.
⮚ WORM – This is an acronym for write once, read many. This is very much like the CD-ROM.
This type of optical disc can be read and reread but cannot be altered after it has been recorded.
WORMs are high-capacity storage devices. Because they cannot be erased and re-recorded, they
are suited to storing archives and other large bodies of unchanging information.
⮚ CD-R and CD-RW – In simple definition, these are blank CD-ROM that are ready for data
storage. A CD-R is similar to a WORM which cannot be erased or re-recorded. A CD-RW is
capable of being erased and re-recorded.
⮚ DVD - This is short for digital versatile disc. The group of DVD disc formats includes various
forms of data recording for computer purposes, including discs that contain pre-recorded data
(DVD-ROM) and discs that can be rewritten many times (DVD-RAM). These are several times
the capacity of CD-ROMs. The simple single-layer version of the DVD holds between 3.7 and
4.38 GB (with double-layer versions holding 15.9 GB), compared to the 650 MB of CD-ROMs.
These higher capacity discs are used particularly for computer games and in multimedia
applications.
⮚ DVD-R and DVD-RW – These are blank optical disks in DVD format ready for data storage,
just like CD-R and CR-RW

COMMUNICATION DEVICES

Communication devices control the passing of information to and from communication

networks. It consists of both physical devices and software that link the various pieces of
hardware and transfer data from one physical location to another. Computers and
communications equipment can be connected in networks for sharing voice, data, images, sound,
video, or even a combination of all these

The most familiar communication device in a typical computer is the modem. a device that
converts between analogue and digital signals. The modem works by, and derives its name from,
a process of modulating and demodulating.

Some modems have become specialized in terms of function. For instance, one of the cards
available for a PC is a facsimile transmission (fax) modem that allows the PC to talk directly to
fax machines and to send and receive fax messages. High-speed modems have been developed
that work at speeds of 2 megabits per second. These are used as components in leading-edge
communications services.
Telecommunication, which is communications over a distance using technology to overcome
that distance