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Input and Output Devices

Input and Output Devices

Most input and output devices reside outside the computer case. These peripheral devices like
keyboard, mouse, printer, and monitor are directly connected but not directly located on the
motherboard. These devices communicate with component inside the computer case through a wireless
connection or through a cable attached to the
motherboard at a connection called a port.

Input Devices

Input devices, such as keyboard or mouse,

are very important part of the computer. It
permits the computer user to communicate
with the computer. Other input devices
include:

 Joystick – a rod-like device often

used by game players.
 Scanner – converts images such as
photographs into a binary
information that the computer can
manipulate.
 Light pen – it can draw or select object from a computer’s video display.
 Touch panel – senses the placement of a user’s surface.
 Microphone – used to gather sound information.
 Video camera – allows you to input video clips into your computer.

1. Keyboard - is the primary input device for entering text, numbers and other characters.

Keyboard Lay-out

DVORAK Keyboard is a keyboard layout

patented in 1936 by August Dvorak, an
educational psychologist and professor of
education, at the University of Washington
in Seattle and William Dealey. It has also
been called the Simplified Keyboard or
American Simplified Keyboard but is
commonly known as the Dvorak keyboard or Dvorak layout.

Although the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard ("DSK") has failed to displace the QWERTY, it
has become easier to access in the computer age, being included with all major
operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD) in
addition to the standard QWERTY layout.
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Input and Output Devices

QWERTY Keyboard is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language

computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in
the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters. The QWERTY design was patented by
Christopher Sholes in 1874 and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first
appeared in typewriters.

Types of Keyboard

 Standard keyboard – keyboard without separate numeric keypad.

 Enhanced keyboard – keyboard with numeric keypad.
101-keys – US standard
102-keys – Universal Standard
106-keys – with additional Japanese Characters.
 Ergonomic keyboard – keyboard designed to be more
comfortable for hands and wrists.

Parts of Keyboard

1. Alphanumeric keys – also known as typing area in which keys are arranged like a typewriter.

2. Numeric keypad – It has two functions: When the numlock is on, it works like a 10-key adder
but when the numlock is off, it works like a cursor-movement keys.

3. Function keys – labeled F1, F2 and so on; located at the top of the typing area. Function keys are
used as shortcut keys of commands for different programs.

4. Cursor movement keys – a set of cursor keys that let you change the position of the cursor on the
screen. Aside from the arrow keys, it includes the Page Up. Page Down, Home and End key.

5. Locking keys – keyboard has 3 locking keys:

Numlock – locks the numeric keypad.

Capslock – locks the letters into upper case and lower case.
Scroll lock – it has no function in most software.
6. Shifting / Ctrl and Alt keys – These keys produce no characters but they are used as shortcuts of
command and produced other characters and symbols.
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Input and Output Devices

7. Special Purpose Keys

1. Pause Key – generally interrupts the current program.

2. Print screen – in DOS, it prints whatever on the screen or it takes snapshot whatever on the
Window’s Screen.
3. Esc key – in cancels the dialog box or sometimes program.
4. Windows key – it quickly displays the Star Menu when using Windows operating system.

Keyboard connector

DIN connector- also called keyboard

port connector, is round and has 5 pins
while the smaller round PS/2 connector sometimes called mini-
din has 6 pins. They are not designed to be hot swappable.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus standard to connect

devices to a host computer.

2. Pointing device is used to interact with the object or items on your screen just like using your hands
to interact with objects in the physical world. You can move object, open them, change, or throw them
away.

Pointing Devices:
 Mouse – has one to four buttons that you can use to
complete a task; some also have small wheel that you
can use to scroll a document or make selections.
 Trackball – a stationary pointing device with a ball on its
top, somewhat like an upside down mouse.
 Touch pad – is a small, flat, rectangular pointing device
that is sensitive to pressure and motion.
 Pointing stick – a pressure-sensitive pointing device, shaped
like a pencil eraser that is positioned between keys on a
keyboard.
 Joystick – a vertical lever mounted on a base. You can control the actions of the item on the screen
by moving the lever in different directions.

Types of Mouse
There are two basic types of mouse exist: a mechanical or wheel mouse and the optical mouse.

 Mechanical mouse has a rubber or metal ball inside, which moves freely as you drag the mouse
on a surface, such as mouse pad.


Hot swapping PS/2 devices usually does not cause damage due to the fact that more modern microcontrollers tend to have
more robust I/O lines built into them which are harder to damage than those of older controllers; however, hot swapping can still
potentially cause damage on older machines, or machines with less robust port implementations.
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Input and Output Devices

 An optical mouse replaces the ball with a microchip, miniature red light, and camera. The
bottom of an optical mouse has a tiny hole for the camera rather than a ball. As you move the
mouse, the red light illuminates the work surface, the camera takes 1,500 snapshots every
second, and the microchip reports the tiniest changes to the computer.

Optical Mouse Mechanical Mouse

Buttons:

1. Primary button (left) – used to select and click items, position the cursor in a document, drag items
and order task.

2. Secondary button (right) – used to display a menu of commands that changes depending on where
you right-click.

Type of Mouse According to Its Connector:

 PS/2 interface
 RS232 (Serial)
 USB
 Wireless (Blue tooth or Infrared)

Output Devices

Once the CPU has executed the program instruction, the program may request that information be
communicated to an output device such as video display monitor or flat liquid crystal display. Other
output devices are printers, speakers, etc.

1. Monitor is an output device used to displays the visual output of a computer. The two
necessary components for output from a monitor are video card and the monitor itself.

The video card not only provides a port for the monitor but it serves as the interface between the
computer and the monitor that is – taking program output and instructing the monitor how to
display it on the screen.
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Input and Output Devices

There are two types of monitors used with PC’s – Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), just like a
television screen and uses vacuum tube and second, the Flat Panel monitor that uses Liquid
Crystal Display (LCD) technology.

Monitor Characteristics

1. Screen Size The diagonal length of the screen surface. The viewable size is the actual size
of the lighted screen in the monitor. A 21-inch monitor for example, may have viewable size
of 20 inches.

2. Resolution The resolution defines the clarity and sharpness of detail (image) produced by
monitor. In computer monitor, resolution is measured as the number of the pixels (short for
picture element) across and down the screen addressable by the software.

The more pixels, the higher the resolution, and the smoother, more realistic the image. For
example, a resolution of 800 x 600 means that there are 800 pixels per horizontal inch and 600
pixels per vertical inch, which creates a total of 480,000 pixels per square inch.

Most monitors support a number of resolutions. Standard CRT monitor display a maximum of
1600 X 1200 pixels, with 800 X 600 pixels as the overall baseline.

3. Refresh Rate (or the vertical scan rate) is the number of times the electron guns scan every
pixels on the screen in every second. The refresh rate is important because of the phosphor
dots fade quickly after the electron gun passes over them. Refresh rate is measured in Hertz
(cycle per second). If you spend many hours in front of a computer, use a good monitor with
a higher refresh rate of (above 70 Hz). The lower refresh rates (below 70Hz) cause monitor
flicker that can tire your eyes.
Interlaced monitor draws a screen by making two passes. On the first pass, the beam
strikes only the even lines, and on the second pass, the beam strikes on the odd lines,
resulting of slower refresh rate. Non-Interlaced monitor draws the entire screen on each
pass.

4. Dot Pitch is the distance between the phosphor dots, which make up a single pixel. In
monitor, there are three dots in every pixel – one red, one green, and one blue. For the better
image, monitor must have a dot pitch of not greater than 0.28 millimeter.

Flat Panel Monitor, also called an LCD monitor, uses a liquid crystal display instead of a cathode ray
tube to produce images on the screen.

Two kinds of LCD Panels are on the market today: active matrix and dual-scan passive matrix
displays. With a dual-scan passive matrix display, two columns of electrodes are activated at the
same time. With active matrix display, also known as TFT (Thin-film transistor) display, the
transistor that amplifies the signal is placed at every intersection in the grid, which further
enhances the pixel quality. Although a dual-scan passive matrix display is less expensive, the
active matrix display provides a much higher quality image.
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Input and Output Devices

A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display common to large TV displays (32
inches or larger). Many tiny cells between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble
gases. The gas in the cells is electrically turned into a plasma which then excites phosphors to
emit light. Plasma displays should not be confused with LCDs, it is another lightweight flat
screen display using different technology.

2. Printer

Printers are output device used to produce text and graphics on a physical medium, such as
paper. The printed information output from a printer often is referred to as a printout or hard
copy, because it physically exists. Among examples of printers are: dot matrix printer, thermal
printer, ink-jet printer, and laser printer.

Printer characteristics
 Resolution – clarity of printer output, measured in dots per inch (dpi), which describes
the density of ink dots used to create printed output.
A 600 dpi printer for example, prints 600 dots across and 600 dots down, for a total of
360,000 dots per inch. A 1200dpi printer can print 1,440,000 dots per inch. The higher
the number of dots per inch the printer has, the higher the resolution or clarity of an
image it can produced.

 Print quality – often described as being letter quality, near letter quality, or draft quality.

 Speed – can be measured in characters per second (cps), pages per minute (ppm),
graphics pages per minute (gppm)

 Memory – used to store the text or image information before printing the document. The
more memory the printer has, the more efficiently it can print out pages. Color – the
printer’s capability to print in color or in black and white. A color printer usually used
CMYK color

The two major categories of printers are impact and non-impact printer.
o Impact printer forms characters and graphics on a printed page by using some
mechanism that physically contacts the paper. An example of impact printers is dot
matrix printer.

o Non-impact printer forms characters and graphics on a printed page by without using
mechanism that physically contacts the paper. Among examples of non-impact printers
are laser, ink-jet, solid ink, photo printer, and thermal printer.

Classification of printer according to its connection:

o Local printer – a printer directly connected to a computer by way of a wireless

connection or by a cable that connects to a parallel, serial, USB, or a FireWire port.
o Network printer – a printer connected to a network and is accessible to a computer by a
way of network.