(See image to the right of an input device)
Cabling eg coaxial, optical, twisted pair
In cabling you have a coaxial cable, optical cable and a twisted pair cable. Coaxial cable is mostly used on computers out of the three. Coaxial was used in the 1980’s and early 90’s, however they started using it again with broad band and also is used for connecting a dish from a TV to the roof. The data transfer rate of the coaxial cable is 100 Mbps (Megabits per second). Coaxial and twisted pair uses copper cables to transfer their data however Fibre optic cable uses light to transmit the data. Therefore optic cabling is much faster in speed and distance. Also optical cabling has massive bandwidths e.g. A hundred people can use the phone off one optical cable. Optical cabling can be used for telephone wires and broadband. Optical cabling transfer speed is 10 GB/s (gigabytes per second). At this speed you could transfer a Blu-ray movie less than 30 seconds. There are two types of twisted pair cables. One is UTP (Unshielded twisted pair) and STP (Shielded twisted pair). UTP and STP were invented in the 1980’s because of the change of phone technology. These days’ people still use these cables because they are cheaper than optical and coaxial cables. UTP contains eight cables and they come in coloured pairs.
Backing storage:
The memory with a computer system as a standard is relatively small and most of this is lost when the computer is powered off. To prevent this there are more permanent store for data this may include software, a secondary storage device or a backing store may be needed, you can also use the cloud to back up your data online.
For a portable store for your data offline storage device are needed.
• CD-ROMS
• DVDS
• Memory sticks
• Floppy disks
There are a lot of ways of backing store now that is on the market for a PC user, magnetic and optical and pen drive and