Unit 1. The hardware
Buses and connectors
Bus
The bus is the cable or line (circuit) through which a digital signal is transported. This signal contains information that goes from the motherboard to the peripherals, or vice versa.- Disc buses. They connect the disk drives to the motherboard: IDE, SATA.
- Expansion cards buses. They connect the expansion cards to the motherboard: AGP, PCI, PCIexpress.
Connector or port
It is the mechanism that allows us to connect a device to the motherboard or to an expansion card.- Peripherals connection: PS2, Serial port, Paral·lel port
- Transmission of data: USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Modem
- Sound: In/out, Microphone
- Vídeo: VGA/SVGA, DVI, HDMI
Exercises
Plug and play devices
When you connect a peripheral and runs at the moment, it is because this peripheral is Plug and Play and uses a technology that allows it to be recognized quickly and automatically by the operating system after installation.
- Write five peripherals that are plug and play .
- What ports do these peripherals use?
Information saved correctly
Practice
Investigate. Buses
One of the main characteristics of the buses is data transfer speed. In each new bus version the speed increases, doing it the computer is faster.
- Find information on the maximum speeds of IDE and SATA buses.
- Which bus is the fastest?
- The USB bus is the most popular due to its versatility. Find the speed of the different USB bus versions.