Computer hardware

Hardware is a comprehensive term for all of the physical parts of a computer, as distinguished from the data it contains or operates on, and the software that provides instructions for the hardware to acoomplish tasks. The boundary between hardware and software is slightly blurry - firmware is software that is "built-in" to the hardware, but such firmware is usually the province of computer programmers and computer engineers[?] in any case and not an issue that computer users need to concern themselves with.

A typical computer (Personal Computer, PC) contains in a desktop or tower case the following parts:

• Motherboard which holds the CPU, main memory and other parts, and has slots for expansion cards
• power supply - a case that holds a transformer, voltage control and fan
• storage controllers, of IDE, SCSI or other type, that control hard disk , floppy disk, CD-ROM and other drives; the controllers sit directly on the motherboard (on-board) or on expansion cards
• graphics controller that produces the output for the monitor
• the hard disk, floppy disk and other drives for mass storage
• interface controllers (parallel, serial, USB, Firewire) to connect the computer to external peripheral devices such as printers or scanners

• Computer architecture
  • Central Processing Unit - CPU
  • Motherboard
    • PCI Bus
    • ISA Bus
    • USB
    • AGP
• Storage
  • Compact disc
  • What is a disk versus what is a disc
  • DVD
  • Floppy disk
  • Hard disk
  • Punch card
  • RAM
  • Tape Drive
• Input/Output
  • Braille Embosser
  • CD-ROM
  • Keyboard
  • Monitor
  • Mouse
  • Computer Speech Recognition[?]
  • Computer Speech Synthesis[?]
  • DVD-ROM
  • Digitizing Tablet
  • Graphics card
  • Joystick
  • Joypad[?]
  • Modem
  • Network card
  • Plotter
  • Printer
  • Refreshable Braille Display
  • Scanner
  • Sound card
  • Touch screen
  • Trackball
  • Webcam
  • Pointing devices

See also

• legacy system
• Open hardware
• optical computer[?]
• DNA computer[?]