EXPANSION CARDS and PORTSExpansion cards are what allow your computer to interface with other external and internal devices such as: hard drives, usb devices, speakers etc. Ports such as USB, Firewire and SATA enable you to connect to external devices such as cameras.

PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect developed by intelUsed to connect: hard drives (SATA, IDE), USB(1 and 2) ports, Firewire (400 and 800) ports, Ethernet (10, 100, 1000), sound cards.

PCI CARDS

PCI slots

USB CARDS

USB: Universal Serial BusUSB 1: 12 Mb/sUSB 2.5: 400 Mb/s

Year created: January 1996

Created by: Intel, Compaq, Microsoft, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, Northern Telecom (Nortel)

Used for: connecting any USB compatible device: cameras, USB flash drive, webcams, MP3 Players, keyboard and mouse, peripherals.

Another way of connecting the keyboard and mouse is by the PS2 ports.

Ps2 ports

FIREWIRE CARDS

Firewire is a data transfer device used for profesional video and audio work. Its ability to transfer 400 or 800 in the later models and up to 45 watts and 30 volts makes it ideal for video cameras and external hard drives.

HARD DRIVE CARDS

IDE cardSATA card

To attach a hard drive to a computer you have to first have a built in or PCI plugin: IDE, SATA or ATA card.

Hard drive plugs (IDE)

Many computers have built in hard drive plugs, but if you wanted to you could add 1 to 6 more IDE or SATA ports. Also usefull

RAM Random Access Memory

RAM aka Random Access Memory is a type of data storage. Random means that the data can be returned constantly regardless of physical location and whether or not its related to previous data. All data on the computer is stored on the Hard Drive but in order for the CPU to work during normally the data the CPU uses is read into the working memory, which are RAM chips.

There are two different types of RAM, DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and SRAM (Static Access Memory). DRAM is the most common type of memory used although SRAM is faster.

RAM TYPES

DRAM

The reason DRAM is slower is because it needs to be refreshed thousands of times per second while SRAM does not. DRAM gives access times of about 60 nanoseconds while SRAM gives access times of 10 nanoseconds. The reason SRAM is not commonly used is because it is a lot more expensive. Both of these types of RAM or volatile which means they lose their content.

RAM TYPES

VIDEO CARDS

The graphics card takes information from the computer and decides how to use the pixels on the monitor to make an image. The information is sent through a cable from the computer to the monitor.

Some really high end graphics cards.

There are two different types of graphic cards, they are AGP and PCI. The AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) is the older version but is popular among the people who have slots in there motherboards. PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is the newer version of the graphics card and it is better for transferring data to and from the graphics card and the main memory.

PCI AND AGP GRAPHICS CARDS

AGP plugPCI plug

SUMMARY

Expansion ports are what allow computer to communicate with other devices, computers and people. Without them we would not be able to interface with computers.

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