Introduction

Contents:

o Computer System: Introduction

o Computer Hardware
o Computer Software
o Computer Memory & Storage Devices
COMPUTER SYSTEM

 INTRODUCTION

Any computer regardless of its types is controlled by programmed instructions,

which give the machine a purpose and tell it what to do. Despite the differences
in size and use, all these computers are part of a system. A complete computer
system consists of four parts: Hardware, Software, User and Data.

Hardware: It consists of interconnected electronic devices that we can use to

control the computer’s operation, input and output.

Software: It is a set of instructions consisting of complex codes (also known as

programs) that make the computer perform tasks.

User: Users are the computer operator. It can be argued that some computer
systems are complete without a person’s involvement; however, no computer is
totally autonomous.

Data: It consists of raw facts, which the computer stores and reads in the form of
numbers. The computer manipulates data according to the instructions
contained in the software and then forwards it for use by people or another
computer.

 INPUT DEVICES

Through input devices, users interact directly with the computer along with
other peripherals. It enables us to input information and commands into the
computer.

Standard Methods of Input

The most commonly used input devices are the keyboard and mouse. Here we
will learn the importance of these devices, the way the computer accepts input
from them and the many tasks they enable us to perform on our PC.

Keyboard
Keyboard is a primary input device for entering text and numbers. A standard
keyboard includes about 100 keys, each of which sends a different signal to the
CPU. Among IBM Compatible Computers, the most common keyboard layout is
the IBM Enhanced Keyboard. It has 101 keys arranged in five groups.
1.) Alphanumeric Keys.
These are the part of the keyboard that looks like a typewriter arranged
in the same way on almost every keyboard. This common arrangement is
called the QWERTY layout because the first six keys on the top row of
letters are Q, W, E, R, T and Y.
Along with the keys that produce letters and numbers, the alphanumeric
key group includes a few additional keys, with specific functions, they are:
 Tab: It moves us to the predefined tab stops in many application
programs. In dialog boxes, we can press Tab to move from one option
to another.
 Caps Lock: This key lets us “lock” the alphabet keys so they produce
only capital letters. It does not affect other numeric keys.
 Backspace: It enables us to erase characters we have just typed.
 Enter: It lets us to finalize the data entry in many types of application
programs. It is also used to choose commands and options in many
programs.

2.) The Modifier Keys

Modifier keys are used to modify the input of other keys. This can be done
by pressing another key while holding down one of the modifier keys.
 Shift: When it is pressed in conjunction with an alphanumeric key,
Shift forces the computer to output a capital letter or symbol. In most
word processors we can use Shift along with various cursor
movement keys to select text for editing.
 Ctrl: It produces different results depending on the program. In many
windows based program, Ctrl key combinations provide shortcuts for
menu commands. For example, Ctrl + O enable us to open a new file.
 Alt: It operates like the Ctrl key except that it produces a different set
of results. In windows based program, Alt key combinations enable
us to navigate menus and dialog boxes without using a mouse.

3.) The Numeric Keypad

It is usually located on the right side of the keyboard, looks like an adding
machine, with its ten digits and mathematical operators (+, -, * and/). It
also features a Num Lock key, which works to force the numeric keys to
input numbers. When it is deactivated, the numeric keypad’s key
performs cursor movement control and other functions.
4.) The Function Keys
These keys are usually arranged in a row along the top of the keyboard.
They allow us to input commands without typing long strings of
characters or navigating menus or dialog boxes. Each function key’s
purpose depends on the program we are using. For example, in most
programs, F1 is the help key.

5.) The Cursor Movement Keys

These keys let us move around the screen. Most keyboards include the
following standard movement keys.
 Arrow Keys: Each of these four keys is labelled by an arrow
pointing to a specific direction. It moves the cursor up or down a
single line, or left or right one character space. Depending on the
program, we may be able to use the Shift and/or Ctrl keys to modify
arrow keys’ behaviour.
 Home/End: We may be able to press Home to move the cursor to
the beginning of a line, and End to move to the end of line. They can
be used in conjunction with modifier keys to move the cursor
greater distances.
 Page Up/Page Down: They let us “flip” through a document, screen
by screen, like turning the pages of a book. Page Up is used to jump
over the previous screen and Page Down to jump over the next.
Their function may also be affected by modifier keys.

6.) Special Purpose Key

In addition to above groups, all IBM compatible keyboards feature six
special purpose keys, each of which performs a specialized function.

 Insert: Although, it is included in cursor movement keys, Insert does

not really control the cursor’s movement. Insert may be used to
switch a program from “Insert Mode” (where text is inserted into the
document at the cursor) to “Overtype Mode” (Where new text is
typed over existing text), and vice versa.
 Delete: It is used to delete characters from a document. Used alone
it removes a single character at a time at the cursor’s location. In
conjunction with modifier keys Delete may be able to remove
multiple characters of text.
 Esc: Typically, the Esc key is used to “back up” one level in a
multilevel environment. It may be used to cancel out the existing
program.
  Print Screen: This key allows the user to capture whatever is shown
on the screen as an image. The image can then be printed, pasted
into a document.
 Scroll Lock: Usually, this key controls the functions of the cursor
movement keys. With some programs, Scroll Lock causes the cursor
to remain stationary on the screen, and the document contents move
around it. When it is turned off, the cursor moves normally.
 Pause: In some programs, the pause key can be used to stop a
command in progress.

Mouse
Mouse is a pointing device considered as standard input equipment. Today, all
new PCs come with it. It rolls around on a flat surface (usually on a desk or
keyboard tray) and controls the pointer. The pointer is an on-screen object,
usually arrow, that is used to select text; access menus; and interact with
programs, files, or data that appear on the screen.

Mouse Operation
- Clicking something with the mouse means to move the pointer to the item on
the screen and to press and release the mouse button once.
- Double Clicking an item means to point to it with the mouse pointer and then
press and release the mouse button twice in rapid succession.
- Dragging an item means to position the mouse pointer over the item, press the
mouse button, and holds it down as we move the mouse. As we move the
pointer, the item is “dragged” along with it. We can then drop the item in a
new position on the screen. This technique is called drag-and-drop editing.

Mouse Configuration
- By default the left mouse button is used for most mouse actions whereas the
right mouse button is used extensively to open shortcut menus.
- For left hander, we can configure the right mouse button as the primary
button which is done by an operating system command.

Variants of the Mouse

Hardware maker have developed various input devices that duplicate the
mouse’s functionality but interact with the user in different ways. The primary
goals of these “mouse variants” are to provide ease of use while taking up less
space than a mouse. They all remain stationary and can even be built into the
keypad.
1) The Trackball
It is a pointing device that works like an upside-down mouse. We rest our
thumb on the exposed ball and our fingers on the buttons. To move the
pointer around the screen, we roll the ball with our thumb. On portable
computers, trackballs may be built directly into the keyboard. Most trackballs
feature two buttons, although three button models are also available. They
are also available in right-and left-handed models.

2) The Trackpad
It is also a stationary pointing device which can be found less tiring to use
than a mouse or trackball. The movement of a finger across a small touch
surface is translated into pointer movement on the computer screen. It
includes two or three buttons that perform the same functions as mouse
buttons. Some of them are “strike sensitive”, meaning we can tap the pad
with our fingertip instead of using the buttons.

Alternative Methods of Input

Although the keyboard and mouse are the input devices that people use most
often, several additional ways of getting data into a computer are available.
Sometimes the tool is simply a matter of choice while alternative input devices
are important parts of some special purpose computers, example: tapping
H/PC’s screen with an electronic pen is a much faster way to input commands
than typing on a keyboard.

A) Devices for the Hand

Most input devices are designed to be used by hand. Even specialized devices
like touch screens enable the user to interact with the system by using
his/her fingertip. There are many input devices which are highly intuitive
and easy to use without special skills or training.

1) Touch Pens
Pen based system including most PDAs and other types of handheld
computers use a “pen” for data input. It is sometimes called styles. We
hold the pen in our hand and write on a special pad or directly on the
screen.

2) Touch Screens
It accepts input by allowing the user to place a fingertip directly on the
computer screen, usually to make a selection from a menu of choices.
Most of them use sensors in or near the computer’s screen to detect the
touch of a finger.
 3) Game Controllers
Personal computers are widely used as gaming platforms because PCs
offer higher graphics resolution than standard television. A game
controller can be considered as input device because a computer game is
a program, much like a word processor. It accepts input from user,
processes data, and produces output in the form of graphics and sound.

Game controllers generally fall into two broad categories: Game Pads and
Joysticks. They enable the user to “fly” or “drive” through a game,
directing a vehicle or character. They are popular in racing and flying
games.

Optical Input Devices

New technologies in computer science allow computers to use light as a source of
input. These sources fall into the category of optical input devices.

1) Bar Code Reader

These devices convert a bar code, which is a pattern of printed bars on
products, into a code the computer can understand. The bar code reader
emits a beam of light – frequently a laser beam of light – that is reflected by
the bar code image. A light sensitive detector identifies the bar code image by
recognizing special bars ate both end of the image.

2) Image Scanner/Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Image scanner translates printed images/texts into an electronic format that
can be stored in a computer’s memory. It converts any printed image/text
into electronic form by shining light onto the image/text and sensing the
intensity of the light’s reflection at every point.

OCR software is used to translate the image into text that can be edited. When
scanner first creates an image from a page, the image is stored in the
computer’s memory as a bitmap. A bitmap is a grid of dots, each dot
represented by one or more bits. The job of OCR software is to translate that
array of dots into text that the computer can interpret as letters and
numbers.

Audiovisual Input Devices

New computers have features that enable them to record audio and video input
and play it back. They do have complete multimedia capabilities.
 1) Microphones & Speech Recognition
Microphones are important input devices used to record speech. They are
used to provide spoken input to multimedia system. With microphone a PCs
will have a phone dialling capabilities. They are also useful for audio
conferencing over the internet.

The capabilities of translating spoken words into text are known as speech
recognition (or voice recognition). With it, we can dictate to the computer
instead of typing, and we can control the computer with simple commands
such as “open” or “cancel”.

2) Video Input Devices

By means of video input devices like PC video camera (webcam) or external
digital cameras the users can input numbers of images or videos to the
computer and can store at computer memory for processing and future use.
Application like video conferencing enable people to use full motion video
images, captured by PC video camera, and transmits them to a limited
number of recipients on a network or to the world on the internet.

 OUTPUT DEVICES

Through output devices, users interact directly with the computer along with
other peripherals. It enables us to transmit or produce information as a result or
processed data.

Soft Copy Output Devices

If the output or result are shown in the form of visual appearance (3D images or
colourful screen) or projected at the wall and sometimes surrounded by the
stereo phonic sounds, they are called soft outputs. They can be realized and
sensed but cannot be touched directly. On the other hand, displayed data can be
modified accordingly by editing the concern.

1) Monitors
It is the most commonly used output device on most personal computer
system. Two important devices determine the quality of the image we see on
any monitor: the monitor itself and the video controller. The video controller
is an interface between the monitor and the CPU. It determines many aspects
of a monitor’s performance or set the number of colours to display. The video
controller contains its own on-board processor and memory called video
RAM.
All monitors can be categorized by the way they display colours:

a) Monochrome Monitors: It displays only one color (such as green, amber,

or white) against a contrasting background, which is usually black. These
monitors are used for text-only displays.
b) Greyscale Monitors display varying intensities of gray (from a very light
gray to black) against a white or of-white background, and are essentially
a type of monochrome monitor. They are used in low-end portable system
to keep costs down.
c) Color Monitors: It can display anywhere from 16 colours to 16 million
colours. Today, most new monitors display in color. They can also be set
to work in monochrome or greyscale mode.

Roughly, monitors are divided into two types:

a) CRT Monitors:
This type of monitor uses a large vacuum tube, called Cathode Ray Tube
(CRT).

It consists of a gun that shoots a beam of electrons through a magnetic

coil, which aims the beam at the front of the monitor. The back of the
monitor’s screen is coated with phosphors, chemicals that glow when
they are struck by the electron beam. The screen’s phosphor coating is
organized into a grid of dots. The smallest number of phosphor dots that
the gun can focus on is called a PIXEL.
 Actually, the electron gun does not just focus on a spot and shoot
electrons at it. It systematically aims at every pixel on the screen, starting
at the top left corner and scanning to the right edge. Then it drops down a
tiny distance and scans another line, as shown in figure below:

In case of colour monitors, there are three electron beams instead of one.
The three guns represent the primary additive colours (red, green and
blue) although the beams they emit are colourless. In a color monitor,
each pixel includes three phosphors red, green, and blue arranged in a
triangle. When the beams of each of these guns are combined and
focussed on a pixel, the phosphors light up. The monitor can display
different colours by combining various intensities of the three beams.

b) Flat Panel Display: Though, CRT monitors have long been the standard for
use with most desktop PCs and provide the brightest and clearest picture
for relatively low cost, they are big, and take up desktop space and can be
difficult to move and require a lot of power. In that case, flat panel
monitors will be the best options.

The most common flat panel monitor is the liquid crystal display (LCD)
monitor. It creates images with a special kind of liquid crystal that is
normally transparent but becomes opaque when charged with electricity.

Unlike phosphor, the liquid crystal does not emit light, so there is not
enough contrast between the images and the background to make them
legible under all conditions. However, the problem is solved by
backlighting the screen with additional power.

Another disadvantage of LCD monitors is their limited viewing angle i.e.

the angle from which the display’s image can be viewed clearly.
 c) Other types of monitors
 Paper White Display: A LCD version of paper white display is called
the page white display that utilizes a special technology, called
supertwist to create higher contrast. They are used by document
designers, such as desktop publishing specialists, newspaper or
magazine compositors etc.
 ELD (Electroluminescent Display): They use a phosphorescent film
held between tow sheets of glass. A grid of wires sends current
through the film to create an image.
 Plasma/Gas Plasma Display: They are created by sandwiching a
special gas (such as neon or xenon) between tow sheets of glass. When
the gas is electrified via a grid of small electrodes, it glows. By
controlling the amount of voltage applied at various points on the grid,
each point acts as a pixel to display an image.

1.1) Properties/Characteristics of Monitor

Since, a poor monitor will cause eyestrain and headaches and can even
cause long-term vision problems, so when buying a monitor it is important
to do some comparison at shopping first. In addition to being aesthetically
pleasing, a good monitor is easier on our eyes, allowing us to work longer
and more comfortably.

a) Size: The size of the monitors is measured diagonally, in inches, across

the front of the screen. For example, a 15” monitor measures 15” from
the lower left to the upper right corner. Actually the picture that
appears on a monitor is smaller than is indicated by the monitor size
because the image cannot extend too far into the corners of the CRT
without becoming distorted.
b) Resolution: It is classified by the number of pixels on the screen,
expressed as a matrix. For example, a resolution of 640 X 480 means
that there are 640 pixels horizontally across the screen and 480 pixels
vertically down the screen. But the actual resolution is determined by
the video controller.
IBM VGA (Video Graphics Array) Standard has the resolution of 640 X
480 pixels and IBM Super VGA Standard expanded the resolution to
800 X 600 and 1024 X 768 pixels.
c) Refresh Rate: It is the number of times per second that the electron
guns scan every pixel on the screen and is measured in Hertz (Hz), or in
cycles/second. The monitor refreshes itself at least several dozen times
each second.
d) Dot Pitch: The distance between the phosphor dots that make up a
single pixel is considered as a dot pitch. If these dots are not close
enough together, the images on the screen will not be crisp. In general,
for color monitor, a dot pitch should be no greater than 0.28 mm.
2) PC Projector
A PC projector plugs into one of the computer’s ports, then projects the video
output onto an external surface. These small devices typically weigh less than
10 pounds and can display over 16 million colors at resolution up to 1024 X
768. They are used to create colorful slide show and animated presentations.
These images can be presented directly from the computer and displayed on
the PC’s screen or projected on a wall or large screen.

3) Sound System
Speakers and their associated technology are the key output for the today’s
multimedia based computer system. They come along with CD/DVD ROM,
Video Controller, and Speakers and with Sound Cards.

Sound card translates digital sound into the electric current that is sent to the
spears. Sound is defined as the air pressure varying over time. To digitize
sound, the waves are converted to an electric current measured thousands of
times per second and recorded as a number.