Topic Input/Output

3 Device

LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
1. List down three types of input/output devices used by computers; and
2. Differentiate between a character-map terminal display and bit-map
terminal display.

INTRODUCTION
The Input/Output (I/O) device is used to enter or retrieve data from the
computer. There are few types of I/O devices available. However, this topic will
focus on only three types of devices i.e the terminal, mouse and printer.

3.1 TERMINAL
A computer terminal consists of a keyboard, monitor and other electronic tools
that control both devices.

There are a few types of keyboards available. The keys in the keyboards act as a
switch to allow electricity connection to occur. The more expensive keyboards
have a magnet underneath every key. When the keys are pressed, the magnetic
wave will pass through a loop, which creates electric current.

A monitor is a box, which generally consists of a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) and its
power supplier. A CRT has a gun, which can shoot electron beams towards the
tube screen as shown in a Figure 3.1 (a).
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Figure 3.1: (a) Cross section of a CRT

A monitor that is able to display a coloured screen has three types of electron
guns i.e red, green and blue colours.

ACTIVITY 3.1

Why are there only three colours? How are the other colours formed?
Give three examples of the colours that are formed.

During a horizontal scan, the electron beams travel horizontally across the screen
within 50 microseconds and causes horizontal lines to be displayed on screen.
Then it moves back to the end of the left side to start the next move. The tool that
produces the line by line image is called a Raster Scanner.

The horizontal is controlled by a voltage that increases in a linear form which

touches deflecting coils on the left and right of the electron gun. The vertical
movement/lines are controlled by the in increase of the voltage in a linear form
that is much slower. The movement/lines touches the vertical deflector below
the gun. A complete image takes about 30 to 60 times per second. The
movements is shown in Figure 3.1 (b)
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Figure 3.1: (b) Scaning form of CRT

The grid in the CRT produces pattern of dots on the screen. When a positive
voltage is connected with the grid, the electrons move at a higher speed towards
the screen and produce light on the screen. However, if a negative voltage is
used, the electrons do not pass through the grid thus not producing any light on
the screen.

There are three types of terminals that are always used i.e. the character-map
terminal, the bit-map terminal and RS-232C terminal. A brief explanation on
these three types of terminals will be given in the following section.

Refer the book entitled Structured Computer Organization for more information
on each type of Terminal.

3.1.1 Character-Map Terminal

Most personal computers use a RAM video to save the data that needs to be
displayed on the monitor. For example, to display a character, the CPU will copy
the particular character into the video RAM. Each character is attached with an
attribute byte that explains how the particular character should be displayed. The
function of the video board is to produce character from the RAM video
repeatedly and to produce signals required by monitor driver.

3.1.2 Bit-Map Terminal

The Bit-map terminal is the same as the character-map terminal, however, its
screen is not arranged as 25 80 character. It is arranged with image elements
called pixel. Each pixel can be on or off and represents one bit of data.
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The personal computer screen can consist of at least 200 320 pixels. The normal
arrangement of pixels for a personal computer is 480 640 pixels. The screen at
an engineering workstation has the arrangement of 1024 1024 pixels. With the
suitable software, most video screens can operate as a character-map terminal or
a bit-map terminal.

Generally, a bit-map terminal is the same as the character-map terminal.

However, its video RAM consists of a larger bit arrangement. The pattern that is
required to be displayed on screen is determined by the software. This software
is known as the driver for the terminal.

Although the bit-map terminal is flexible, it still has some disadvantages.

(a) It needs a large video RAM.
(b) In terms of efficiency, backups from the video RAM to the screen are
required to display an image on screen.

SELF-CHECK 3.1

What is the size of the video RAM for 1024 1024 display of a:
(a) Character-map Terminal?
(b) Bit-map Terminal?

3.1.3 RS-232C Terminal

There are many organisations manufacturing computers and hundreds
manufacturing terminals.

To enable the use of terminals for all types of computers, a standard terminal
computer interface called the RS-232C is introduced. The RS-232C terminal has
25 connector pins. The standard of the RS-232C is in the mechanical size and
connector form, voltage level and the meaning for each signal in a pin.

ACTIVITY 3.2
Based on your knowledge, how many types of mouse currently exists
in the market?
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3.2 MOUSE
Computers nowadays can be used by everyone, even those who do not have
knowledge on how a computer works. However, the ENIAC generation
computers could only be used by those who were involved in developing and
building it. In the 1950s, computers were only used by professional
programmers. Now, computers are widely used by all walks of life.

Many computer users found typing instructions on keyboard a hassle and not
user-friendly. They preferred a method that enabled them to point out the
instructions that are displayed on the screen. The easiest way to do this is by
using a mouse.

A mouse is a small plastic component that is usually placed on the table, next to
the terminal.

When the mouse is moved, the cursor on the screen also moves, enabling the user
to point at a particular item.

A mouse has three buttons with different functions, enabling the user to select an
item from the menu.

ACTIVITY 3.3
If you were to design a Mouse, how many buttons would you design?
Why? Share your thoughts in class.

There are three types of mouse i.e the mechanical mouse, the optical mouse and
the optomechanical mouse.

(a) Mechanical Mouse

This type of mouse has two rubber balls arranged vertically underneath it.
When the mouse moves parallel to the main axis, one of the balls will roll.
When the mouse moves against the main axis, the other ball will roll.

(b) Optical Mouse

This type of mouse does not have any balls underneath it. Instead, it has a
LED and a light detector.
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Figure 3.2: Optical Mouse

(c) Optomechnical Mouse

The Optomechnical mouse is similar to the mechanical mouse. It has two
balls with each of them rotating 90 degrees. However, each ball has a LED
in the middle. When a mouse is moved, the balls rotate and light shines
through the openings. The amount of light signals detected indicates the
amount of movements made.

Although a mouse is designed in various ways, it is generally designed to

send a serial of three bytes to a computer in every 100 milliseconds. All of
these characters are usually received through the RS-232C line, as if it is
typed on the keyboard. The first byte consists of a marked integer, which
indicates how many units have been made towards x in the last 100
milliseconds. The second byte gives the same information for movements
towards y. The third byte informs the current state of the mouse button.
Sometimes only two bytes are used for each coordinate.

3.3 PRINTER
A printer is a device used to produce a hard copy (permanent human-readable
text and/or graphics) of documents. In this section, we will discuss a few types
of commonly-used printers such as the impact printer, dot-matrix printer and
laser printer.
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(a) Impact Printer

An impact printer operates like a typewriter, which is the oldest type of
printer. A piece of metal or plastic, bearing letters, is attached to the printer.
The piece of metal strikes a ribbon of ink and transfers the ink on the paper.
This will leave images of letters on the paper.

In personal computers, this type of printing technology is used by the

daisy-wheel printer.

The impact printer used by a main frame has pieces of letters attached to an
iron chain around the paper. A printer with 80 columns will have a
hammer for each column. Each line is printed by instructing each hammer
to strike the paper the moment the letter is in front of the hammer.

(b) Dot - Matrix Printer

The print head has 7 to 24 pins that are activated electromagnetically, which
will scan each line printed. The cheaper printers have seven pins to print 80
characters in a 5 7 matrix per line. The result is seven horizontal lines with
each line having 5 80 = 400 dots. Whether each dot can be printed or not
depends on the letters that will be printed.

The printing quality can be improved using two techniques i.e by adding
the number of needles and by using overlapping printing dots.

Figure 3.3: Dot-Matrix printer

(c) Laser Printer

The laser printer uses the same technology as the photocopier machine. The
important section in a laser printer is the drums, which rotates at certain
times. During the early rotation, the drum is supplied with 1000 volt of
electricity and is covered with light sensitive material. Later, this laser light
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will scan the whole drum as the electron wave in a cathode ray tube. This
light is modified to produce clear and dark dots.

The first line of dots that have been scanned is transferred to the toner. The
toner will attract to the dots that have electrostatic charge and produce an
image for that line. Then the drum that is coated with the toner is rolled or
pressed over the paper and transfers the black powder to the paper. The
paper is passed through the hot roller and the toner is transferred onto the
paper. During rotation, the drum is discharged and cleaned from any
excess toner. It is then prepared to be charged and coated again for next
page.

ACTIVITY 3.4
Discuss below questions in class.
1. In your opinion, what type of printer is suitable for a receipt that
has more than a copy?
2. There are laser printers, which do not use the laser technology.
How do these printer work?
3. Do you think the impact of printers are still being used now?
4. Futher information on printers can be found in the book
structured Computer Organisation.

The existence of I/O devices has increased the efficiency of a computer

system. This has made the computer system a necessity because a variety of
tasks can be done more efficiently and faster compared to the manual
technique.

Bit-Map Terminal Printer

Character-Map Terminal RS-232C Terminal
Mouse Terminal