Input,Output and Computers

- April 25, 2020

A computer system is made up of four main types of components - input devices,output devices,secondary storage devices and processor.

Elements/components of a computer system

In computing, an input device is a piece of computer hardware equipment used to provide data and control signals to an information processing system such as a computer or information appliance. Examples of input devices include keyboards, mouse, scanners, digital cameras, joysticks, and microphones.

Digital Camera

Duplex Combo Scanner

Joystick

Keyboard

Microphone

Mouse

An output device is any piece of computer hardware equipment which converts information into human-readable form. It can be text, graphics, tactile, audio, and video. Some of the output devices are Visual Display Units (VDU) i.e. a Monitor, Printer, Graphic Output devices, Plotters, Speakers etc.

Monitor

Plotter

Printer

Speaker

At first,the input devices receive data from the user. Then they convert data into binary form (the language of 0 and 1,also called the machine language). Machine language is the only language, a computer can understand directly. Lastly,they provide converted data to computer memory for processing. So this is the process involved in getting data into a computer.

Computers can be simply classified into 4 types -

1. Supercomputers

2. Mainframe computers

3. Minicomputers

4. Microcomputers

Supercomputers

A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).

Supercomputers

Mainframe Computers

Mainframe computers or mainframes (colloquially referred to as "big iron") are computers used primarily by large organizations for critical applications; bulk data processing, such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning; and transaction processing.

Mainframe computers

Minicomputers

A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller computers that was developed in the mid-1960s and sold for much less than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors.

Minicomputer

Microcomputers

A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. It includes a microprocessor, memory and minimal input/output circuitry mounted on a single printed circuit board. For example - desktop,media center system unit,notebook or laptop,netbook,tablet PC,handheld etc.