Peripheral Devices

What are peripheral devices? Every component that is not a direct component of the PC is considered a peripheral device. Still don’t understand. Ok, then look in front of you. What do you see? Well you probably have your hands on the mouse and the keyboard. They are both peripheral devices. Look at your speakers (if you have them), they are peripherals. The only peripherals you can’t see are the devices inside that ugly gray (or black) box. If you have a printer, scanner, speakers, or anything else connected to the gray box, all of these devices are peripheral devices. They provide input to the computer to tell it what to do. The monitor is also a peripheral; it is connected to the motherboard by cables and slots. These items are discussed in other peripherals. Here is an outline of this section. If you would like to skip ahead, feel free.

Input devices

Keyboards

Mechanical
Capacitive
Comparison

Mouse and/or Mice

Opto-mechanical
Optical
Trackball

Other Pointing Devices

Touch Screens
Touch Pad
Finger Mouse

Scanners 

Flatbed
Hand-Held
Feed

Output Devices

Display Devices 

Display Concepts and Technology

MDA
HGC
CGA
EGA
VGA
SVGA
XGA

Monitors

CRT

Quality

Dot Pitch / Refresh Rate

LCD

Active Matrix
Passive Matrix

Printers

Impact
Sprayed-Ink
Electrophotographic
Plotter

Speakers

Other Peripherals

Sound Card
Modems

Analog
Cable
ISDN
DSL

Ethernet Card

LAN
Hub

Don't be scared.  I know it is a long list, it exhausted me just writing it.  Continue the tutorial with the first section Input Devices.

All material and images on these pages are copyright Joseph,Ed. This page was developed for the Thinkquest1999 competition.