Computer Components 2

Question 1

What is a USB port?

Answer 1

• Universal serial bus (USB) and it is a standard cable interface for personal and consumer electronic devices.
• USB ports allow USB devices to be connected to each other with and transfer digital data over USB cables.

Question 2

Give some USB features?

Answer 2

• Maximum 127 peripherals can be connected to a single
• Maximum speed of up to 480 Mbps
• Length of individual USB cable can reach up to 5 metres

Question 3

What is a firewire port?

Answer 3

• Similar to USB, it is external connector that provides high speed connection between a computer and peripheral devices.
• Two types of firewire:
  Firewire 400: 6 pin connector and supports data transfers up to 400 Mbitsps
  Firewire 800: 9 pin connector and supports data transfer up to 800 mbps

Question 4

Give some characteristics of a firewire port?

Answer 4

• Supports plug and play, so you can plug in a device and the system will automatically recognise it.
• Supports hot plugging (do not have to restart system for device to be recognise)
• Distributes power
• Considered as a high speed interface so you can use it for connecting peripherals devices that require fast data transfer speeds.

Question 5

What is a network port?

Answer 5

• Provides users access to local network and the internet
• Can refer to two things the network access point, such as the home router, and the second refers to the actual location where a network cable plugs into an access point or a computer.

Question 6

Characteristic of a network port?

Answer 6

• external devices such as routers are connected to a computer using a cable and ports.

Question 7

What is a sound expansion card?

Answer 7

• enables computer to manipulate, record and output sounds

- Necessary for all CD-ROMS and have become common on modern computers

Question 8

Characteristics of a sound expansion card?

Answer 8

• Full duplex mode: play and record sound simultaneously whereas half can only do one at a time
• ability to generate multiple simultaneous voices when playing MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)

Question 9

What is a network expansion card?

Answer 9

• Used to control exchange of data between computers and network.
• Most of them designed for particular type of network, such as Ethernet or token ring.

Question 10

Characteristics of a network expansion card?

Answer 10

• Status indicator light
• Network adapter card will have one or more ports
• Physical network address (Mac address) - burned onto the card by the card manufacturer.

Question 11

What is a graphics expansion card?

Answer 11

• Used to control and produce videos on the monitor

Question 12

Characteristics of a graphics expansion card?

Answer 12

• GPU clock speed measured in megahertz, millions of cycles per second
• Current graphics cards contain RAM memory that is separate from your PC’s RAM. The capacity of modern graphics cards will range from 512MB to 8GB

Question 13

What is a fibre channel expansion card?

Answer 13

• enables high speed access for blade servers to connect to a fibre channel storage network (SAN)

Question 14

What is SATA?

Answer 14

Serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) allows devices such as optical and hard drive to link to a computer. The port is linked to another on the motherboard wit 7 pin ribbon cable.