LIS508 lecture 4:

storage & output devices

Thomas Krichel
2002-10-21
 Today we have fun with
• Output devices
– Fundamental concepts
– Hardcopies
– Softcopies
• Storage devices
– disks
• magnetic
• optical
 Literature
• Output devices
– Hutchinson and Sawyer chapter 3, part 2
• Storage devices
– Hutchinson and Sawyer chapter 4
 Fundamental concepts I
• Pixel
– A very small element of a picture
– Inside the pixel color and brightness is fixed
– All the pixels are created by the computer
• Resolution
– Number of pixels per inch
– Or total number of pixels, confusion
 Fundamental concepts II
• Red-blue-green model.
– Add colors red blue and green to various
degrees to get pixels of any color
– Additive model
• Cyan-Magenta-Yellow
– Uses basic color cyan, magenta, yellow, to
absorb light on the surface
– Subtractive color model
 Output comes in two forms
• Tangible or hardcopy output
– Card puncher
– Printer
• Intangible or softcopy output
– Monitor display screens
– Loudspeaker output
 Hardcopy to printers
• Printer prints
– character symbols
– Graphics
• Output quality is measured in dpi dots per
inch
• Printers vary from 60 to 1500 dpi
• 600 dpi seems common
 Types of printers: impact
• Forms characters or images by mechanic strikes
of a print hammer or wheel.
• One example is a typewriter.
• Most common form is the dot matrix printer
– Head with small pins (9, 18, 24)
– Strike ribbon against paper
– Do 72 to 144 dpi, 30 to 400 chars
– Noisy
– Image may smear
 Types of printers: non-impact
• Form characters and images without
physical contact
• Less moving parts, less noise
• Two forms
– Laser printer
– Inkjet printer
 Laser printer
• Images are produced on a drum
• A laser beam sets electrical charge on
dots on the drum
• Magnetically charged powder called toner
flies to the electrified dots on the drum
• The drum rolls the toner on the paper
• A second drum burns the toner on the
paper
 Laser printer performance
• Can print 200 pages per minute provided
that the computer can chunk out the data
that fast
• Can print a lot of different fonts
• More fancy models can even do color
• Use a page description language to
generate the images
 Inkjet printer
• Spray tiny, electrically charged drops of
ink from 64 nozzles through holes in a
matrix onto paper
• There are usually four cartages of colored
ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)
• Head moves around and software says
where to spray
 Inkjet printer performance
• Can print color at much less cost than
laser printer
• Lower resolution than a color laser printer
• Slow, one page may take up to 10 minutes
• More expensive to operate than a color
laser printer when you have to print a lot of
color.
 multifunction printers
• Device that can print, scan, copy and fax
• When one component is kaputt, you can
not indulge in any of the activities
 Softcopy output: monitor
• Size is measured diagonally from corner to
corner in inches, not the size of the
viewing area
• Common sizes are 13, 15, 17, 19, 21
• There are two types
– Cathode-ray tube CRT
– Flat panel displays
• All display an image through a number of
pixels, individual dots that make it up
 Display quality
• Dot pitch is the amount of space between
adjacent pixels, usually measure in millimeters
• Resolution is the number of pixels measured as
horizontal pixel number × vertical pixel number.
• Refresh rate is the number of times per second
the pixels are recharged. > 75 is ok
• Color dept, 8bit, 16bit and 32bit, true color. It is
often not necessary to have true color. It is
better to have higher resolution and less colors.
 Types of flat panel monitors
• Passive matrix display: one transistor
controls a whole row or column of pixels.
– good for monochrome
– but not for color.
– less expensive
– Lower energy consumption
• Active matrix display, aka thin film
transmission TFT: each pixel has its own
transistor
 CRT monitors
• Have a three rays that paint red blue and
green
• They emit beams that hit phosphate in the
screen surface
• Light is emitted
• Analogue technology
 Moving from CRT to TFT
• Video card still emit analog beam signals
to the monitor.
• They have to be converted to the flat panel
signal that is digital
• Causes some performance losses.
• Slow conversion to flat panel technology
• Likely to be taken up outside IT, like in art
for example
 RAM and disks
• RAM is random access memory.
• It is the operational main storage on a
computer.
• It is live memory. When the computer is
switched of it dies.
• Therefore we need to store on other
devices, that store when switched off.
• The most important are disks.
 Structure of a disk
• Disks are round devices divided into tracks and
sectors.
• A hard disk may have several physical disks. All
tracks on the same location in different disks
from a cylinder.
• Disks are divided into sectors.
– A sector is usually 571 bytes long
– 512 bytes are used by the user
– The rest is reserved for disk operation
• The disk spins, a head reads and writes data.
 Data integrity
• The special data in each sector is kept there to
try ensure that the user data is safe.
• It contains a summary of the user data.
• When the summary and the user data no longer
match, the summary can be used to correct the
user data.
• Modern disks can monitor if they are a in good
shape, and move data from good to bad sectors.
 Formatting a floppy
• Physical formatting:
– writing tracks
– writing sectors
• Logical formatting:
– labeling each sector
– create boot record
– windows: create file allocation table (FAT)
 Formatting a hard disk
• That is the same as formatting a floppy but
• Between physical and logical formatting, the
hard disk may be partitioned.
• This allows for several logical disks on the same
physical disk
• Therefore the boot record is more complicated
than on the floppy and called a master boot
record MBR.
• Example: dual boot Linux/Windows machine
 Windows logical disks
• Floppies use FAT12 format
– The boot records is exactly one sector long
– therefore called the boot sector
– Does not allow for long file names
• The logical disks on a hard disks may use
FAT32 format if larger than 512Mb
– System area
• Boot record
• FAT
– User area
– Can handle disks of the size of 2 tera bytes
 disk architecture on a PC: IDE
• IDE integrated device electronics is the
classic architecture. An IDE controller chip
allows for 2 times 2 disks
– primary / secondary
– master / slave
• The master/slave setup is controlled by
jumper settings. Consult manufacturer's
web site.
disk architecture on a PC: SCSI
• SCSI small computer systems interface
allows to daisy chain many devices and
gives control of the hard disk to the
computer, resulting in
– faster operation
– more expensive
– less standardized
• not as popular as predicted.
 optical disks
• CD-ROMs can store up to 6 Mega Bytes
• CD-R holds the same storage, it is
recordable once.
• CD-RW are read and writable, but does
not have the same capacity, because it
uses some magnetic technology.
• DVDs can hold up to 17 Giga Bytes. Used
by the contents industries.
 backups
• There is a song of the Beatles…
• The backup utility is based in the “system
tools” section of programs/accessories.
• It also has an emergency repair tool, that
lets you fix things.
• It is best to define a backup job, and then
run it at scheduled times.
• Time between jobs needs to be chosen
with care.
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Thank you for your attention!