All the wonderful tasks that a personal computer is capable of running would not have any meaning if he had not
a way to communicate with the outside world.
Early personal computers such as the Altair, used a method
communication so primitive that is admirable how the pioneers of computing had imagination to create a contraption
that could offer any practical use in the real world.
Instructions and program data were introduced in
computer through electrical switches - and not the type miniaturized transistors, but the size of a thumb.
The
computing results were shown in a pattern of seemingly random small lighted lamps on a panel.
Nowadays, the forms of communication that we use with devices that include PCs even more pioneers
visionaries of personal computing be able to imagine.
The keyboard and cathode ray tube (CRTs) are so common that
is hard to think of a PC without them.
There is also the modem, scanner and mouse that help us to get information and
instructions from the outside world.
In addition to traditional CRT there is a series Monitors advanced as the monitor SuperVGA
active-matrix color, and printers capable of far better things to offer than just print letters rudimentary.
With this, the personal computer became part of our real world, to the
point of becoming something that is to be treated more like
human - someone who listens and responds - and less like a pile of microchips and electronic components.
In summary, most of external devices to the microprocessor - in other words, most of PC - constitutes
device input or output.
Each act of reading or writing data to a disk drive or memory
uses the BIOS service (acronym for Basic Input / Output System, or the basic input / output) of the computer.
Still, we usually associate only the input and output devices such as the keyboard, monitor and mouse, of which
rely on to do our work.
The restricted vision we have of the importance of input and output devices is
understandable, though without them even the most powerful PC in the world no more than a clumsy tool for
interest and a curiosity for others.
Source: Evolution of Computers
No comments:
Post a Comment