OUTPUT DEVICES

Output device are used for outputting the results that are obtained after processing
by the CPU. The task of the output devices is to display the results. Output devices show
the processed information by converting the computer generated data into human readable
forms such as graphs, alphanumeric text, audio responses etc.
1) Vision Display Unit
2) Printer
3) Plotter
4) Sound Synthesizer
5) COM (Computer Output to Microfilm)
Soft Copy and Hard Copy Devices
Soft copy devices are devices that produce outputs of temporary nature. Visual
display unit, audio speakers are examples of soft copy devices.
Hard copy devices are devices that produce outputs of permanent nature. Examples
are printers and plotters.
1) Monitors
When we use a computer we need some device to see results of the work we are doing. A
computer monitor is used for this purpose. The user can see any information displayed on
screen make corruption before it is stored. So the output obtain from the screen is often
called as soft copy.
Monitors are the Visual Display Units. Monitors are available in various sizes.
Common sizes are 14,15,17,19 and 21 inches. Notebook screan sizes are usually smaller,
typically ranging from 12 to 15 inches. This is the size of the viewable screen measured
across the diagonal.
A Visual Display Unit consists of a video card or adapter and a compatible visual
display.

i) CRT (Cathode Ray Tube)

CRT Monitors were a widely used type of monitors. These
monitors operate much like television sets, main difference
between TV Screen and monitor is, a monitor does not contain any
tuner circuit.
Like a TV, main component inside a monitor is a picture tube or
CRT. It is an evacuated glass tube conical in shape with a phosphor
coating on the inside of the front screen. An electron gum is at the
narrow end. The gum fires a narrow beam of electrons at the screen. The beam of
electrons (cathode rays) emitted by electron gun passes through the focusing and
deflecting systems that directs the beam towards specific positions on the phosphor coated
screen. Phosphorus will glow when they are struck by the electron beam. When the
electron beam strikes the phosphors, it continues to glow briefly. So for the image to be
stable, the phosphors must be re-activated by repeated scans of the electron beam before
the glow fades away. (Refresh Rate/Frequency should be 75 updates per second/ 75Hz or
more)
Pixels
This refers to an individual dot on the screen. All graphic you see on a monitor are
composed of hundreds or thousands of these graphic dots or pixels. Each pixel can be of
different color thus producing the image.
Resolution
A monitor’s resolution depends on number of potential pixels, the monitor is
capable of displaying. The value is given horizontal and vertical pixels. For e.g. 600x400.

CGA(Colour Graphics Adapter) monitor have a resolution of 320X200 pixel EGA ( Enhanced
Graphics Adapter) monitors have a resolution of 640 X350 pixel and displays 16 different
colors.
EGA (Expands Graphics Array) has 800 X600 pixel resolutions in 16.8 million colors and
1024 X 768 resolutions in 65536 colors
VGA (Video Graphic Array): This display interface is lead to the monitor to the world of GIU
and Animation etc. SVGA, XGA and 8514 display interfaces are some of the modern display
cards available now.
ii) LCD Monitor (Liquid Crystal Display)
LCD Monitors are monitors that use liquid crystals in displays.
They are thinner lighter and draw much less power than CRTs. Liquid
Crystals are neither solid nor liquid.
A liquid crystal display is a thin, flat display device made up of a
number of color or monochrome pixels arranged in front of a light
source or reflector. In color LCDs each individual pixel is divided into three cells or sub
pixels which are colored red, green and blue. Each sub pixels can be controlled
independently to yield thousands or millions of possible colors for each pixel.
Instead of shooting a beam of electrons at phosphorescent material struck to the
glass , most flat displays is an electrical charge to excite liquid crystals suspended
between two layers of glass. There are two main types LCD series.
1) Passive Matrix
2) Active Matrix or TFT (Tin Film Transistor)
 Unlike CRT monitor which are analog device LCD monitors are digital technology. Pixels
are set On or Off and to a specific value based on digital input.
a) TFT Display (Thin Film Transistor Display)
TFT monitor is a monitor that uses a variant of CCD which uses thin film transistor
technology to improve image quality. Transistors are used to control the voltage at pixel
locating and it prevents leaking out of charge from the liquid crystal cells. For each pixel,
there is a tiny transistor. As each transistor is so small, the amount of charge needed to
control it is also small. So the power requirement is also less. Most modern LCD monitors
uses TFT Technology.
2) LCD Projector
Projector is another method to display output
generated by computer. Projector is the process of displaying
information on a large screen. Projector systems i.e. LCD
projector is connected to a computer and whatever appears
on the computer screen are displayed on to the projector screen in enlarged form. LCD
Projectors are used in class rooms, conference rooms for multimedia presentations with a
large audience.
Gas-Plasma-display also use individually addressable
pixels. Each element is infact a tiny fluorescent light
containing a neon or neon-argon mixture gas between
sandwich of glass, when it is energized by applying
sufficient voltage at the intersection of electrodes.
3) Printers
A printer is a hard copy device. It is used to print information on a paper. The quality
of a printer is determined by the clarity of output it produces.

A printer can print at 300 dpi (dots per inch). It means a solid one-inch printed
square will consist of 90,000 tiny dots (300*300). There are several types of printers.

The output obtains from printer is called hard copy or print out. Printers are
connected to computers by cables and are plugged into something called output port.
Printers are mainly connected to parallel port or USB. Printers are classified into two. They
are impact printers and non impact printers.

Impact printer form character by striking a print head or a tiny hammer against an
ink contained ribbon. Whereas non-impact printer produce character using chemical,
thermal, electrical and laser technology. There is no physical contact with paper or no
impact.

Printers

Impact Non Impact

Ink Jet.
Character Line
. Chain Laser.
Solid Drum Electro static.
Charact
Dot
er P. Matrix Band.

40 col 80 col 136 col

Daisy
wheel
.
Advanced color Printers.

Color laser Thermal color.

Solid ink jet
P.
Thermal Dye Thermal wax
Transfer Transfer

I) Impact Printers
These printers print by physically striking a head or needle against an ink ribbon to
place a mark on the paper. Multiple carbon copies can be produced using impact printers.
Impact printers are also much noisier than non-impact printers.
These printers are classified into two category character printer and line printer.
Character printer prints one character at a time; whereas line printer prints one line at a
time. Character printers are classified as solid character printer and Dot Matrix printer.
Daisy wheel printers are example for solid character printer. In the daisy wheel printer
each petal of the wheel has a character composed on it. A motor spins the wheel rapidly
and when the desired character spins to the correct position a print hammer strike it to
produce the output..

a) Dot-Matrix Printers
Dot-matrix printers print each character as a pattern of dots.
The print head comprises a matrix of tiny pins, typically with seven
rows with nine pins in each (9 * 7 matrix). The shape of each
character i.e., the dot pattern is obtained from information held
electronically in the printer.
A dot-matrix printer is capable of printing both textual as well as pictorial data such
as graph charts. It can also print text in fonts of different types and sizes. The printer speed
of a typical dot-matrix printer ranges from 200 to 600 characters per second (cps).
 Dot matrix printer’s
s print head
h ad is made of a vertical set of pins. As the head moves
on paper these
e pins strikes a ribbon and through ribbon image is produced on paper. The
image as if made of series of dot that is why this printer called dot matrix printer. As the
image is produced by impact dot matrix printers
print s can be used to generate multiple carbon
copies. A dot matrix printer can print 200 to 600 characters per second (cps) where as
Daisy wheel printer can print characters at a speed of 17 to 200 cps.

b) Line Printer
Line printer can print 3000 line per minute. High speed
line
e printer can use impact
act method to produce line
line-at-a time
print out. Some are dot matrix device; others typical
typically use
rapidly moving chains or bands
b or drum which is embossed of
print characters.. When the Drum or chain spin to the desired character position, hammers
or print head strikes against it.
II) Non-Impact Printers
In non-impact
impact printers there is no physical striking of print
print-heads
heads on the ink ribbon.
They are quiet printers when compared to impact printers. It is not possible to produce
carbon copies with non-impact
impact printers.
pri
a) Ink-Jet printers
They are non-impact
impact printers. It works somewhat like dot
matrix printer. Where a dot matrix printer strike ribbon to produce
image on paper, an ink jet printer produces jet of ink through a
series of small nozzles to create image. These nozzles are
arranged vertically, when head moves across the page, jet on and off Spitting ink to
produce the image.
They print characters by spraying small drops of ink onto paper. Special type of ink
is used. In piezo electric jet, when an el
electric
ectric charge is applied to piezo-actuator,
piezo it
changes its shape resulting in ejection of ink drops by a pressure wave created by the
mechanical motion. Thus the droplets of ink are sprayed into the paper.
The advantages of inkjet printers are they are ve
very
ry quiet in operation. Quality of the
printout is also good. The print quality is 300 dots per inch to 1200 dots per inch. The
printing speed ranges from 1 pages
ges per minute to 20 pages per minute.(PPM)
b) Laser Printers
In laser printers, laser beams are used. They are high quality printers. They are
non-impact
impact printers. The printing speed is also high. The working is
very similar to Photostat machines. Internally most of the parts are
like a photo copie
copier.. In this, computers send full page image to
printer. Inside printer, page image is produced on a drum using laser beam. Next the drum
is passed through a toner and toner gets attracted to these positions, wherever you have
image. A paper is passed next to this drum and toner from drum get transferred to this
paper. Next this paper is passed through fuser rollers, which heats the toner and fuse the
image permanently to the paper.
Speed of printer is calculated CPS and PPM (Character Per second and Pages per
Minute) resolution or printing quality of a printer is shown as DPI (Dots per Inch)

Advanced Color Printers

 Color Laser
 Solid Ink
 Thermal Dye Transfer
 Thermal Wax Transfer
Color Laser use toner and drum process employed by their monochrome cousins.
Instead of just black toner, four separate toner colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and
Black –CMYK) are employed.
Solid Ink printers melt solid sticks of coloured wax and spray the resulting liquid onto
the page, much like an ink jet printer does. Some newer models actually apply the
melted wax to a rotating drum, which then transfers the material to the page-similar to
the operation of laser printer.
Thermal Dye Transfer printer works by rolling a dye-saturated ribbon across the page.
The ribbon is heated to transfer the dye to the page, with separate passes for each
color.
In Thermal Wax Transfer Printers, they heat a wax-coated ribbon as it rolls against the
paper. The melted wax is laid on specially coated paper.
Plotters
Plotters are output devices similar to printers. Plotters are generally used for printing
engineering drawings. Plotters can print large images. There are two types of plotters. They
are Flat Bed Type and Drum Type Plotters.