HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Hardware
Hardware
refers to the physical equipment used for the input, processing, output And storage activities of a
computer system. It consists of mechanical and electronic devices, which we are
able to see and touch easily. Some of them are central
processing unit (CPU), primary
storage devices, secondary storage devices, input and
output unit and communication devices. These are explained below:-
●
Central
processing unit (CPU): It manipulates the data and controls the tasks
Performed by the other components.
●
Primary
storage: It stores temporarily data
and program instructions during The processing.
●
Primary
memory (main memory): These are RAM
(Random Access Memory/Read-Write
Memory), and ROM (Read-only-memory).
●
Secondary
storage: These store data and programs for future use.
These are Hard Disk (Local Disk) and External Hard Disc, Optical Disks,(CDR,
CD- RW,
DVD-R, DVD-RW), Pen Drive, Memory Cards, etc.
Secondary Storage Devices
Communication
Devices: These are used for communication or flow of data from one computer
to another computer.
Some of them are Modem, Switch, Router, TV tuner
card, etc.
Communication devices
Software
A computer cannot do anything
on its own. It has to be guided by the user. We have to give a sequence of
instructions to the computer in order to do any specific job. Software is
simply a computer program or a set of instructions. Software guides the
computer at every step indicating where to start and stop during a particular
job. The process of software development is called programming.
Types of software
There are two types of
software, namely, system software and application software.
System software
System Software are general
purpose programs designed to perform tasks such as controlling all operations
required to move data into and out of the computer. It communicates with
keyboard, printer, card reader, disk, tapes, etc. It also monitors the use of
various hardware’s like memory, CPU, etc. System software acts as an interface
between hardware and application software. Remember that it is not possible to
run application software without system software. Some of the system software’s
are Disc Operating System (DOS), Windows, Unix/Linux, MAC/OS X etc.
Application software
It is a set of programs, which are written to perform
specific tasks of the users of computer. These software’s are developed in high
level languages to help the user to get the computer to perform various tasks.
Some of the application software are MS Office, Macromedia (Dreamweaver, Flash,
and Freehand), Adobe (PageMaker, Photoshop), LIBSYS, SOUL, WINISIS, KOHA, etc.
INPUT AND OUTPUT UNIT
An input and output unit
consists of two parts namely, input devices and output devices. Normally, an
Input and output unit can control one or more peripheral devices. These units
are explained below:
Input Unit
The data is entered / input into the computer through
input devices. The input devices translate the data / information from a
natural language in which the user is working, into the machine language which
the computer can understand. Computer language is in the form of binary code (0
and 1). Input devices are classified as follows:
●
Human data entry devices - keyboard, mouse, joystick, trackball,
digitizing labels and; pick devices - light pen touch screens.
Input Devices
●
Source data entry devices (Audio
input –speech recognition; video input digital camera; scanners - optical
scanner OCR, OMR, MICR, Barcode Reader). Pictures of some of the source data
entry devices are given in
● Output
Unit
The output unit accepts output data from computer
via output devices and transforms the data into human readable form. All the
information inside the computer is in the form of binary digits (0 and 1).
Output devices convert them to numbers, words, graphics, sound and motion which
we can easily understand.
Output devices are classified as
● Hard copy device (Printer, Plotter, Computer Output on Micro-film)
- Soft copy devices (Monitor, Visual Display Terminal, Video Output and Audio Response). Output devices are shown in
Monitor
Printer
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