Input and Output Devices - 2210

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Input / Output Devices - 2210

What is a Computer?

A computer is a machine that can be programmed to accept raw data, which is input, process it into meaningful
information, which will be output, and store it away in a secondary storage device for safekeeping or later reuse.

Computers work under the control of a stored program, which can be changed.

To function, a computer system requires four main aspects of data handling:

 input
 processing
 output
 storage
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Input
Input devices accept data in a form that the computer can use and then send the data to the processing unit.
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Processing
The central processing unit (CPU) has the electronic circuitry that manipulates input data into information people
want. The CPU executes program instructions.
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Output
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Output devices show people the processed data in a form that they can use easily.

Storage
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Storage consists of secondary storage devices such as magnetic disks, tapes and CD ROMs, which can store data
and programs outside the computer itself. These devices supplement memory, since memory can hold data and
programs only temporarily.
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Input / Output Devices - 2210

Input Devices: The user connection


Most of the data comes in hand written forms that cannot be directly input into the computer. These documents need
special data preparation devices that translate the source document into a medium that the computer can read, such as
a magnetic disk. Input devices are used to input or capture data into a computer system. The ideal input device would
be able to get data into a system as accurately as possible in the least amount of time.

There are wide ranges of input devices used today:

Keyboard
The keyboard of all input devices is the oldest and most familiar. Keyboards are devices that contain their own chips.
Basically each key in the keyboard acts as a switch, which is switched on when the key is pressed.

The microprocessor scans the keyboard hundreds of times a second to see if a key has been pressed; if it has, a code
that denotes which key has been pressed is sent to the processing unit. The CPU translates this code into an ASCII
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code (the code that computers use to represent characters on the computer keyboard), which is then used by a
computer program.
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Mouse

A mouse is an input device that usually has one, two or three buttons, which are used to make selections on the screen.
It is a pointing device. A mouse translates its movements on the desktop into digital information; this is fed to the
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computer, which in turn causes the cursor to move on the screen. The cursor is the blinking line on the screen, which
indicates that the computer is ready to type. Underneath the mouse is a rotating ball and as the mouse is moved on the
desk, and sensors pick up this movement to move the pointer on the screen. (The pointer helps the user point and click
on an icon or menu on the screen).
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Trackball
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What do you get when you turn a computer mouse upside down? A trackball! The ‘mouse' stays still while the user
rotates the ball. Trackballs are often seen on laptop computers because it has the advantage of taking up much les s
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space compared with a conventional mouse. It is a pointing device.

Joystick

A joystick is similar to a trackball. Whenever the stick is moved, the pointer moves in a similar direction on the screen.
Joysticks are commonly used for games, but you can also see them being used for scanning purposes in hospitals.

Scanner
Scanners are used to scan text or pictures into a computer's memory. Then the scanned image is manipulated in some
way before being printed. There are cheap hand held scanners and or flatbed A4 sized ones. Both black and white and
color scanners are available.

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Input / Output Devices - 2210
Touch Screen
A touch screen is a special kind of screen. This is sensitive to touch. A selection is made from usually a menu present
on the screen, which is activated by touching part of it. These screens are ideal for use in banks, restaurants and bars,
where customers who are not use to keyboards can obtain information about the services offered.

Light Pen

A light pen is a pen-shaped device held in the hand. The presence or absence of light is detected by it. The pen is used
to select a particular point on the screen. The screen is refreshed about every 1/50 th of a second by a point of light
travelling rapidly across it. The pen detects this point of light and the computer can work out by precise timing where the
pen is. Light pens need special software to make them work and are mainly used for design work using CAD packages.

Digital Camera

Digital cameras allow the user to transfer the photographs taken, directly into the computer. Previously, if a photograph
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had to be input into the computer, it had to first scan using a computer scanner and then viewed on the screen. Digital
cameras eliminate the requirement for a scanner. No film or photographic paper is needed. The quality of photographs
obtained even from low cost digital cameras is quite good. Digital cameras are very efficient to use especially if you
want to take photos and edit them later on the computer.
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Sensors
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For industrial computer applications, such as process control, the computer is required to interact directly with the plant.
Since the computer can only communicate with the outside world by using electrical signals, any devices connected to it
must be made compatible using analog to digital converters (ADC) and digital to analog converters (DAC).
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Sensors are designed to pick up analogue values of the physical variables and feed them into the computer.

Example:
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• temperature

• pressure

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intensity of light
• electrical voltages
• electrical currents
• switch positions

Depending on the values received by the computer, it activates other output devices like motors, valves etc.

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Input / Output Devices - 2210

Special Input Devices

Bar Code Readers

A bar code is a set of parallel lines of varying thickness, which are alternately black and white, which represents a
number. The number represented by the bars is also printed above or below the bar code. Bar codes may be read by a
hand held scanner, which is passed over the bar codes. The scanner is attached to a computer terminal or a stationary
scanner, which scans the bar code as it is passed over it.

When bar codes are used for products in shops the coded number usually contains:
 Country of origin
 Manufacturer
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 Item number for the product

We have to note that the price is not included in the bar code. This is because the prices change often. Instead the price
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is stored in the computer and when the price is needed it can be retrieved. The expiry date is also not included since it
too may change.

Bar codes are used in products in supermarkets, books and magazines in libraries, luggage at airports and warehouse
stock control systems. Bar code systems are now at an advanced stage and readers are able to read the bar codes at
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distances of five meters or more. This fact has increased the number of applications.

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR)


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Magnetic ink characters printed using magnetic ink, are the numbers that you see at the bottom of bank cheques. As
the document is passed through the reader the ink is magnetized and the characters are recognized by their strength of
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magnetism.

Most banks use the MICR to encode the following information from the magnetic ink characters at the bottom of the
cheques:
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 the cheque number


 the branch number of the bank
 the customer's account number

Optical Character Reader (OCR)

The document is first scanned using a scanner. The software used to scan the document would be an Optical character
recognizer. Then the document can be saved in a word processor. i.e. As a MS Word document.

An optical character reader recognizes characters from their shape. Text is input using a scanner and special OCR
software. OCR involves scanning the image of a page of text with a scanner, and then using special software, it
converts the scanned image into standard ASCII code, which recognizes each of the characters separately, so that they
may be altered if needed, using a word processor. Scanners often have OCR software included in their price.

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Input / Output Devices - 2210
Optical Mark Reader (OMR)
Optical mark readers are able to sense marks made in right positions on a special form. These forms include multiple
choice answer sheet marking (MCQ papers), questionnaires and enrolment forms which are data capture forms for
OMRs.

Voice Recognition
Using a microphone, human speech is coded into a sequence of electrical signals and the computer searches a set of
stored patterns for the sound, which has been the input.

Voice recognition is useful where only a few different commands are required and the hands are busy to type or use the
mouse. On some advanced jet fighters the pilot has a small display of some of the instruments. Using one of a number
of simple pre-stored voice commands this display can be changed. Relatively few words can be recognised and the
error rate is high. The system is not suitable for use in noisy places.

Digitizer
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Digitizers are rather like electronic tracing paper and, like paper they come in all sizes from a modest A4 size to a very
large AO size. A cursor or pointer is used on a graphics tablet to trace over technical drawings put on the screen using
a computer- aided-design package such as AutoCAD.
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Smart Cards
A smart card is a plastic card, which has its own processor and memory chips. One card can store about 80 00
characters. The holder's identification data is stored in the card.
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These cards are used in a variety of applications such as:

 Checking authorization for accessing security sites - The user inserts the smart card into a reader when
prompted to enter the password. If the password is correct the user will be granted entry to the particular site.
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(The user is usually asked to reconfirm the password). The processor inside the smart card can be
programmed to self-destruct if the wrong password is entered too many times.

 Telephone cards - The card is inserted into a slot found in the telephone box and the relevant amount will be
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reduced from the value of the card after the call.

 Credit cards - The card conceals the holder's identification data and the credit limit, which are used in
supermarkets and leading shops. It holds the details of transactions made by using the card.
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Point-of-Sales (POS) Systems


In a typical POS/cash transaction, a cashier passes the bar-coded product over a scanner or hand-held 'wand'. The
computer can store the data for stock control and data analysis. The terminal is usually connected to a central
computer, which would be the central database, which reads and records details, looks up the price of the product and
displays the price on a lighted panel. It also computes the amount due and prints an itemized receipt.

This method of data is beneficial:

 To the customer - It forms the basis for a computerized checkout system. Customers get a quicker and more
accurate service, (no time wasted or mistakes made when entering prices) as well as an itemized receipt.

 To the supermarket - The result is that the supermarket management can get instant or continuous stock
checks and adjusting orders precisely to the flow of goods, thus improving efficiency. The cost of adding a bar
code to a label is tiny and it saves time.

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Input / Output Devices - 2210

Output Devices: Information for the User

Output devices provide the results after processing, in a suitable form. In many cases this will be in the form of a hard
copy (printout), or on screen (soft copy). With the widespread use of electronic mail (e-mail), output could be in the form
of an electronic message to another computer.

Display Screens (Monitors)


Today the computer monitor is the most common form of output, which is also referred to as the VDU or Visual Display
Unit that is the most prolific form of output.

Pixel is the name given to a picture element and refers to the smallest area of the screen. The entire screen is made of
a lot of pixels. The clarity or clearness of a computer screen is measured in terms of resolution. Screens are normally
classed as low resolution, medium resolution or high resolution. High-resolution monitors use more pixels than low
resolution.
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The quality of a computer monitor is based on the following properties:


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The resolution
 The number of possible colors
 The size (normally the monitors come in sizes of 15" and 17")
 Energy consumption and radiation
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Different types of display screens:


Standard television set - An ordinary home television can be used for computer output.
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Standard computer monitors - These have better resolution than TV monitors. Larger monitors with high resolution
are used for specialized applications such as Desktop Publishing and CAD.

Liquid Crystal Displays - These are screens made up of two glass plates with liquid in between.
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Printers
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There are many types of different printers used for computer output. We will consider 3 types in this section.

 Dot-matrix printers
 Ink-jet printers
 Laser printers

Dot-Matrix Printers

Dot-matrix printers are impact printers, which can transfer print through layers of paper. This means that they are
able to print multi-part stationery.

Example:

If you want to print a multi-part sheet where, the white top sheet goes to the customer, the yellow sheet goes to
accounts and the blue sheet to the store sheet, then you will need to use a dot-matrix printer. (similar to the blue,
yellow and green layers of bills found in shops when they write the bill).

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Input / Output Devices - 2210
A dot-matrix printer is very cheap and has the lowest running costs of any printer. It has a matrix of small pins in its
print head. As the head moves across the paper the correct pins are fired out to hit an inked ribbon and the shape of
the letter required is formed. The greater the number of pins, the higher the quality of the print.

Ink-Jet Printers

An ink-jet printer is a non-impact character printer. They are silent in operation, have good quality printing and have
become a very popular printer for PCs. The print head of an ink-jet printer consists of nozzles (usually 64). The ink
flows through the appropriate nozzle, where it is heated and a bubble forms. This expands and breaks, releasing a
very small ink droplet. These dots are much smaller, and there are more of them, than in a dot-matrix printer. These
printers produce printouts that are almost comparable to that produced by laser printers and therefore can print high
quality text and graphics.

Laser Printers
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These are non-impact page printers. A laser beam is used to form an image on a rotating charged metal drum. Laser
printers have toner cartridges, which contain a fine powder called toner. The charged image then picks up the toner
particles, which are transferred to the paper, which is also charged. Once the image has been transferred, heat and
pressure are used to stick it to the paper permanently.
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Since they are page printers they are very fast. The speed of a laser printer is typically about 8 ppm (pages per
minute). Color laser printers are now available. Laser printers offer both high speed and excellent print quality of text
and graphics. Although they are expensive, they have become widespread in many offices where quality printouts are
needed because of the many advantages it has.
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Graph Plotters
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A plotter is a device commonly used in producing printing plans, maps, line diagrams and three-dimensional drawings,
which are particularly line diagrams or graphical output on paper.

Graph plotters use pens to produce images and different pens containing different colored inks may be used. Plotters are
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generally classified as pen plotters or as pen less plotters. Pen less plotters use various kinds of different technologies.
At the moment high quality work for publication is done on electrostatic plotters.
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Voice Synthesis
Voice synthesis is used when you get the output as sound. This method is usually very useful for handicapped people.

Example:

Visually handicapped people, find the spoken word from a computer invaluable. For instance, each letter as it is typed
can be heard on headphones when special software with a word processor is used.

Projector

These are special devices, which can be connected to the computer and used as a substitute to the monitor. These are
used when the output has to be shown to a large audience by projecting the computer output on a white screen or wall.

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Input / Output Devices - 2210

Input I Output Devices


Some devices fulfill both input and output functions for a computer system. They act as an interface for data going in as
well as out and sometimes they do this simultaneously. One such device is the modem.

Modem
The modem is used to connect the computer to the telephone line. The telephone network operates using analogue
voice signals, while a computer operates on digital signals. The modem is the bridge between the digital and the analog
signals, and therefore provides an interface between computer and telephone systems.

The modem converts on and off digital data into an analogue signal by varying, or modulating, the phase and frequency
of an electronic wave. On the receiving end of a phone connection, a modem does just the opposite: it demodulates the
analogue signals back into the digital code. These two terms MOdulate and DEModulate give the modem its name.
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