Output Devices & Storage

Computers must have output devices and places to store data The output devices that you are probably most used to will be the screen, or monitor, and the printer.

GCSE Information Technology GCSE Information Technology

Output Devices

VDU

Monitor LCD screens

Printers Dot matrix printer Ink jet printer Laser printer Plotter Speakers

GCSE Information Technology GCSE Information Technology

Monitor (VDU)
A monitor or screen - output device that displays graphics, text and video. The picture on a monitor is made up of thousands of tiny coloured dots called pixels.

Quality of the output on a monitor depends on its resolution. Resolution depends on the number of pixels that it can display
Settings are: 640*480, 800*600 (SVGA), 1024*768 (XGA)

GCSE Information Technology

How a Monitor shows colour

Three electron guns fire red, green and blue beams that light up phosphorous dots on the screen (RGB) In early monitors, each gun could be switched on or off meant only 8 colours (1 bit per gun) Later technology allowed the guns to vary in intensity means 16,777,216 colours (8 bits per gun)

GCSE Information Technology

How a monitor works

CRT or Cathode Ray Tube

An electron beam scans from the top to the bottom of the screen Phosphorous dots on screen glow for a second as beam passes over Very fast repetitions give the impression of constant picture
GCSE Information Technology

LCD screens (Liquid Crystal Display)

Based on method used by calculators Used for portable computing Now appearing with desktop computers Take up less room They dont use much power Angle of viewing is limited How they work It works by controlling the amount of light passing through crystals.
GCSE Information Technology

Dot Matrix Printer

A dot matrix printer forms characters and graphics on the paper by patterns of dots - make up the printout. The print head - made up from pins which are pushed out in different arrangements to form patterns of dots. An impact printer used for multi-part stationery

Continuous stationery Inexpensive and cheap maintenance Noisy Poor quality Slow it is a line printer prints a line at a GCSE time Information Technology

Ink Jet Printer

Printouts are made up of patterns of very small dots Print head has a set of tiny holes rather than pins. As the print head moves across the paper ink is forced out through the holes by heating to form the image. very quiet to operate Good-quality printouts of both graphics and text. Relatively cheap especially for colour Maintenance costs are relatively high Slow it is a line printer prints a line at a time Can use photographic paper

GCSE Information Technology

Ink Jet Printer

GCSE Information Technology

Laser Printer
high-quality printed output of both text and graphics quick quiet. more expensive than inkjet printers and the toner cartridges are more expensive.

suitable for large volume printouts because of their speed.

Colour and A3 are more expensive
GCSE Information Technology

How a laser printer works

Called a page printer because it builds up an image of a whole page before printing A laser beam reads the screen image & sends it to a drum on the printer The drum is charged and toner is attracted to it As the drum loses its charge, the toner is transferred to the paper in the form of the page image A heating process sets the toner on the paper GCSE Information Technology

Plotter

uses a pen to draw the computer output onto the paper. Flatbed or drum Paper movement is controlled in one direction Pen is attached to an arm and moves in the other direction Some plotters use a set of coloured pens to produce colour output. Very accurate drawings and are often used in computer aided design or CAD. Can give very large sizes Generally slow but speed up to several feet per second
GCSE Information Technology

Sound

Computers can output music, voices and many other complicated sounds Basic sound can be produced from motherboard To be able to output quality sound a computer needs to have a special circuit board inside it called a sound card. Attach speakers or headphones
GCSE Information Technology

Storage Devices
Backing storage - to store programs and data when they are not being used or when a computer is switched off. When programs and data are needed they are copied into main memory (RAM).

Magnetic storage stores to disk or tape;

Optical storage stores to CD or DVD Direct access You can go direct to the data on your storage device; Serial access you have to start at the beginning and work your way through to get to the data that you want
GCSE Information Technology GCSE Information Technology

Storage Devices
Read data we say this when we want to get data from a storage device; Write data we say this when we send data to a storage device

Floppy Disk Hard Disk Tape

CD ROM CD-R CD-RW DVD

Zip discs Jazz discs Flash memory Memory sticks

GCSE Information Technology GCSE Information Technology

Hard disk
A platter of circular metal disks coated with magnetic material and sealed in a hard disk drive inside the computer. Data accessed much more quickly than data stored on a floppy disk. Can store much more data than a floppy disk. Today over 100 gigabytes of data. The heads float above the disks and move in and out to the correct track as the disk spins
GCSE Information Technology

Formatting disks
Formatting :
Dividing the surface of the disk into tracks and sectors. Setting up a root directory where an index of files will be kept. Data is located by finding the address of its location from the index. - a track and sector number

GCSE Information Technology

Hard disk (2)

Hard disk platters

Surface of a hard disk showing tracks and sectors Reading heads

GCSE Information Technology

Advantages/Disadvantages of hard disk storage

Much larger capacity Fast data access Direct access

Can become damaged and data lost Cannot be removed from the computer

GCSE Information Technology

Tape
Magnetic; tape reels, and cassettes or cartridges. Large tape reels for backup on mainframe computers. Cartridges used to backup copies of the programs and data on pcs and networks. advantage is that it is cheap and can store large amounts of data. Can store very large capacity Very cheap

Serial access, therefore very slow Vulnerable to magnetic fields

GCSE Information Technology

CD ROM
Optical storage uses laser CD-ROMs can store approximately 650 megabytes of data - 400 times more data than an ordinary 3 inch floppy disk. a CD-ROM cannot be erased or changed, and no new information can be saved. Distributing software

Large amount of storage capacity No accidental deletion Cheap to produce Direct access

Not as fast as hard disk Cannot write to it

GCSE Information Technology

CD-R

Optical storage uses laser Can be written to once using a special drive A more powerful laser permanently changes a special dye which allows data to be written to it. Lower intensity beam used to read the data Can be read by ordinary CD drives Used for archiving and small scale distribution
Not as fast as hard disk Can only be read to once so disk is no good if data is no longer needed Disk surface is easily damaged Can take a long time to write to it
GCSE Information Technology

Can be read by ordinary drives No accidental deletion Cheap to produce Direct access

CD-RW
Optical storage uses laser Can be written to many times using same drive (approx 5000 times) Can be read by ordinary CD drives Used for photographs and backup Disc can be re-used Uses same drive Direct access Not as fast as hard disk Disk needs to be formatted Disk surface is easily damaged Can take a long time to write to it
GCSE Information Technology

DVD
Can store minimum of 4.7 gb This is about 2 hours of high quality video or 32 volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica + animations and video. Data packed closer together Can be made up of 2 layers 9.4 gb Can be double-sided 17 gb Used for video Huge storage capacity Not as fast as hard disk DVD drives can read CDs older computers may not have a DVD drive Direct access Disk surface is easily damaged Can take a long time to write to it More expensive than CD-RW GCSE Information Technology

DVD R / DVD RW

Same as CD DVD R can be written to once DVD RW written to many times

GCSE Information Technology

Flash memory (EEPROM)

Flash memory - fast information storage. It enables ROM to be electronically changed a block at a time - no moving parts - Units of memory called blocks (roughly 512 bytes).

Your computer's BIOS chip CompactFlash (most often found in digital cameras) SmartMedia (most often found in digital cameras) Memory Stick (most often found in digital cameras) memory cards (used as solid-state disks in laptops) Memory cards for video game consoles
GCSE Information Technology

Flash Memory Card

Small storage medium for text, pictures, audio, video.) - CF card (CompactFlash), the SmartMedia card, the Memory Stick, and the MultiMediaCard (MMC). Storage capacities - corresponds to the price. Storage capacities over 2Gb Nonvolatile memory, - data is stable on the card, does not need to be refreshed, no moving parts. Portable, increasing number of small, lightweight and low-power devices. Advantages over the hard disk drive: smaller and lighter, extremely portable, completely silent, allow more immediate access, less prone to mechanical damage. Capacity less than hard drive Use digital cameras, palm tops, mobile phones, MP3
GCSE Information Technology

Memory Sticks

digital data storage technology launched by Sony in October 1998 Share and transfer pictures, sound, and other data between compact electronic devices Size of a flat AA battery Various sizes now up to 32 gb Uses - storing image files. digital music players, PDAs, cellular phones, the PlayStation Portable, and in other devices

GCSE Information Technology

Pen drive/ USB flash drive

removable and rewritable

EEPROM erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" - canbe erased individually without affecting the others

Storage capacities typically range from 64 MB to 64 GB USB ports on almost every current PC and laptop. to transport and store personal files

GCSE Information Technology

DVD RAM

cartridge - used in video and camcorders Stores data on tracks (like hard disk) Long life Reliable Archival use Very fast Problems of compatibility with some devices More expensive than DVD
GCSE Information Technology

HD DVD and Blu Ray

HD DVD

video recorders and computer games optical 15 gb Abandoned in 2008

video recorders and computer games same physically as CD optical storage, up to 50 gb. High definition video storage

Blu Ray

Format war between the two won by Blu Ray GCSE Information Technology