1.1.3 Input, Output and Storage

Question 1

Input Device

Answer 1

Any peripheral device that can accept data, presented in the appropriate machine-readable form, decode it and transmit it as electrical pulses to the CPU

Question 2

Output Device

Answer 2

Any peripheral device that translates signals from the computer into a human-readable form or into a form suitable for reprocessing by the computer at a later stage.

Question 3

Storage Device

Answer 3

Any medium (optical, magnetic, solid state and even paper which holds data or programs

Question 4

Magnetic Storage

Answer 4

Storage medium which uses surfaces coated with a layer of magnetic material on which data can be stored by magnetically setting the arrangement of the magnetic material. This is done by electromagnetic read/write heads.

Question 5

Flash Storage

Answer 5

Collection of memory chips that is controlled by its own software to make the collection of chips act like a disk drive.

Question 6

Optical Storage

Answer 6

Storage medium that uses plastic discs on which the data is stored as patterns on the surface in pits and lands.

Question 7

RAM

Answer 7

Volatile main memory. Access times are very fast. Often referred to as Main Memory, although RAM can be used in main areas of computing and computing storage. When used as main memory RAM typically can be thought of as containing the Operating System, programs in use and the data those programs are using while the computer is running.

Question 8

ROM

Answer 8

Memory for which the contents may be read by cannot be written to by the computer system. Software in ROM is fixed during manufacturing. It typically holds system boot up instructions. ROM is non-volatile. More modern types of ROM can be written to in limited ways, these include, PROM, EPROM and EAROM.

Question 9

Virtual Storage

Answer 9

A means of apparently extending main storage by using backing storage (such as a hard disk) as if it were main memory.