A Guide to Hardware, 4e

1
A Guide to Hardware, 4e

• Chapter 9
• Multimedia Devices and Mass Storage

2
Objectives

• Learn about multimedia devices such as sound
  cards, digital cameras, and MP3 players
• Learn about optical storage technologies such as
  CD and DVD
• Learn how certain hardware devices are used for
  backups and fault tolerance

3
Multimedia on a PC

• Goal generate output that emulates reality
• Differences between cyberspace and real space
• Sights and sounds in reality are continuous
  (analog)
• Computer data is binary (discrete and digital)
• Challenge bridge world of cyberspace with
  reality
• Topics covered
• CPU technologies used to process multimedia data
• Multimedia devices e.g., sound cards, MP3 players

4
Multimedia FundamentalsThe goal of multimedia
is to reproduce sound and images as life like as
possible

• Sampling part of the process of converting
  sound or video from analog to digital format
  (computers are digital, whereas sound is analog)
• Sign wave is measured at uniform time intervals
  and saved as a series of bit blocks
• The larger the sample size, the more
  samples(blocks), the better the quality of
  reproduction

5
Sound Wave
6
8-Bit Sampling
7
16-Bit Sampling
8
CPU Technologies for Multimedia

• Three early CPU improvements
• MMX (Multimedia Extensions)
• Used by Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, and Pentium II
• Architectural enhancements in which Intel added
  57 new instructions to handle the processing of
  multimedia software
• Increased cache (added 32k of internal cache)
• SSE (Streaming SIMD Extension)
• Single instructions executed on multiple pieces
  of data
• Used Pentium III
• SSE2, SSE3, and Hyper-Threading (HT)
• Used by Pentium IV
• Instruction sets are the operations a CPU can
  perform
• MMX and SSE help with repetitive looping. Not
  having to loop back to the same instructions
• SSE improves 3D graphics and speech recognition
• Pentium 4 can use MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, HT
• AMD uses 3DNow!, HyperTransport!, PowerNow!

9
CPU Technologies for Multimedia

• Software must be written to use the specific
  capabilities

10
Sound Cards

• Expansion cards that Stages computerized sound by
  3 steps
• Digitize or input sound (sampling)
• Store digital data in compressed data file
• Reproduce or synthesize sound (digital to analog)
• May be Sound Blaster compatible
• Sound blaster is considered the legacy standard
  by which others are based
• Surround Sound supports up to eight separate
  channels
• Types of ports
• Output ports used by speakers
• Input ports used by microphone, CD player,
  others
• Use CD/DVD drive or TV tuner card to bypass CPU

11
Installing a Sound CardRemember the audio cable
from the CD
12
Installing a Sound Card
13
Figure 9-1 This motherboard with onboard sound
has eight sound ports
14
Troubleshooting Sound Problems

• Some questions to ask
• Are the speakers turned on?
• Is the speaker volume turned up?
• Is the volume control for Windows turned up?
• Some troubleshooting tasks for installation
  problems
• Download new or updated drivers
• Uninstall and reinstall the sound card
• Some ways to resolve issue of games without
  sounds
• Update and install new drivers
• Reduce sound acceleration

15
Digital Cameras and Flash Memory Devices

• A digital camera works like a scanner
• Scans the field of image set by the picture taker
  
• Use light sensors to detect light and convert it
  to a digital signal stored in an image file using
  JPEG format (Joint Photographic Experts Group) on
  smartmedia
• Digital values can be stored, viewed, edited,
  printed
• High end cameras can store in much larger and
  better quality uncompressed file type called TIFF
  (Tagged Image File Format)
• Like scanners, but faster, digital cameras use
  TWAIN format as standard for doing the transfer
• TWAIN Technology Without An Interesting Name
• Solid state device (SSD) memory based on a chip
• Examples thumb drives and flash memory cards
• Flash memory cards are used in digital cameras

16
Digital Cameras Smart Media or Flash RAM Card
17
Digital Cameras and Flash Memory Devices
(continued)

• Transferring images to your PC
• Install the software bundled with your camera
• Connect your camera to the PC
• Connections may be cabled or wireless
• Upload the images
• Editing or printing images once they are on the
  PC
• Use image-editing software e.g., Adobe Photoshop
• Connect camera to TV using the video-out port

18
Web Cameras and Microphones

• Web camera captures digital video for use on Web
• Two meanings of Web cam
• Digital video camera
• Web site providing live or prerecorded video
  broadcast
• Setting up a personal Web cam for a chat session
• Use setup CD to install software
• Plug in Web camera into a USB port
• If sound is needed, plug in speakers and
  microphones
• Use chat software, such as MSN Messenger, to
  create a live video session

19
Figure 9-17 Instant Messenger session using a Web
camera
20
MP3 Players

• MP3 is a popular audio compression method
• Small players which can store a lot of
  information

21
MP3 Player

• A device that plays MP3 files (a version of MPEG
  (Motion Pictures Experts Group) compression)
• The popular compression method used with MP3
  players stores just the changes from the previous
  frame of data to the next, rather than
  compressing the the whole frame of data. Can
  provide as much as 124 reduction in sound file
  size, without much quality loss.

22
How MP3 Players Work

• Music is transferred to the MP3 player and files
  are stored in onboard memory or hard drives
• MP3 files are downloaded from PC to MP3 player
• Files can be purchased and downloaded from the
  Web to a PC
• Music files on CDs can be ripped and converted to
  MP3 format
• Memory can be expanded with add-on flash RAM
  cards
• SmartMedia
• CompactFlash
• Memory Stick

23
MP3 Players

• Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG)
• Standard for data compression (MPEG-1 to MPEG-4)
• Stores data that changes from one frame to the
  next
• Yields compression ratio of 1001 for full-motion
  video
• MPEG-1
• Used in business and home applications to
  compress images
• MPEG-2
• Used to compress video films on DVD-ROM
• MPEG-3
• Used for audio compression
• MPEG-4
• Used for video transmissions over the Internet

24
MIDI Devices

• Musical instrument digital interface (MIDI)
• Set of standards representing music in digital
  form
• Specify how to digitally describe and store every
  note
• Specify how to connect electronic music equipment
• MIDI software offers a wide range of editing
  options
• Example add your own voice to a song
• MIDI port
• 5-pin DIN resembling a keyboard port
• Either an input port or output port, but not both

25
TV Tuner and Video Capture Cards

• TV tuner card interfaces a PC with a TV
• Video capture card saves video input to hard
  drive
• TV tuner/video capture card may also be a video
  card
• Three ways to incorporate tuner and capture
  features
• Embed TV tuners and TV captures in motherboard
• Fit card to fit into a PCI, PCI Express x16, or
  AGP slot
• Connect external device to a USB port
• WinTV-USB by Hauppauge Computer Works
• NTSC (National Television Standards Committee)
• Sets standards for TV tuners and video capture
  cards

26
Optical Storage Technology

• CDs and DVDs are optical storage technologies
• Pattern of pits on surface of disc represent bits
• Laser beam reads the bits
• CDFS (Compact Disc File System)
• Original file system (still used by CDs)
• UDF (Universal Disk Format) file system
• New file system (used by DVDs and CDs)
• Windows supports CDFS and UDF

27
Using CDs

• CD drives are read-only or read/writable
• Regular CD surface
• Purchased with data already burned on it
• Continuous spiral of sectors of equal length
• Data stored as lands (1) or pits (0)
• Process of reading data
• Laser beam is passed over pits and lands on
  surface
• Drive reads bit value by amount of laser
  deflection
• Process of writing data
• CD imprinted (burned) with lands and pits into
  the plastic material of the CD
• Acrylic surface is added to protect the data

28
Figure 9-26 The spiral layout of sectors on a CD
surface
29
Inside a CD-ROM Drive
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Types of CD drives (also identifies disk)

• CD-ROM drive read only memory
• CD-R (Compact Disk Recordable) (Music)
• A CD drive that can record or write data to a CD
• WORM (Write Once Read Many)
• Data cannot be erased once it is written
• May or may not be multisession (written to more
  than once)
• Instead of Pits and Lands, heat is applied to
  cause less reflection (burns a chemical) the same
  as a Pit does
• CD-RW (Compaq Disk ReWritable) (Data)
• A CD drive that can record or write data to a CD
• Data can be erased and overwritten
• May or may not be multisession
• Instead of a permanent chemical change, a phase
  change occurs, which is reversible.

31
How a CD-ROM Drive Can Interface with the System

• How an optical drive interfaces with motherboard
• Using a Parallel ATA(EIDE), Serial ATA, or SCSI
  interface
• Using external drive that plugs into port, such
  as USB or parallel port
• Installing a CD drive
• Installed drive identified in directory by
  letter e.g., D
• Four choices for installation using parallel ATA
  (EIDE) (master/slave)

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Figure 9-30 Rear view of an EIDE CD drive
33
Caring for CD-ROM

• Causes of most problems with CD-ROMs
• Dust or Fingerprints
• Use clean dry cloth, but never cleaner or alcohol
• Scratches or Defects on surface of CD
• Precautions
• Hold by edges
• Dont glue stickers (unbalance)
• Dont expose to heat or direct sun
• Dont bend or drop
• Be Aware of the Emergency eject hole for stuck CDs

34
DVDs

• DVD (digital video disc or digital versatile
  disc)
• Multimedia requires massive amounts of data and
  DVD storage capacity is faster and larger than CD
• Single-sided holds up to 8.5 GB of data (movie
  length)
• Double-sided disc can hold 17 GB of data
• Uses the Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system
  and can read older CDs
• Distinguishing between a CD and DVD
• DVD can use top and bottom surfaces to hold data
• Second opaque layer nearly doubles disc capacity
• DVD laser can read smaller and denser packets of
  data than CD
• Audio data stored in Surround Sound
• Video data stored using MPEG-2 video compression

35
DVD

• DVDs must decompress and decode the MPEG-2
  compressed data.
• Older DVDs Used an accompanying decoder card to
  decode MPEG-compressed video data and Dolby AC-3
  compressed audio.
• Todays systems do not require a separate decoder
  card, as the decoder is built into the drive and
  newer operating systems like XP have their own
  internal decoder software.

36
Installing a DVD Drive (continued)
37
Table 9-7 DVD standards
38
Hardware used for Backups and Fault Tolerance

• Frequent backups help preserve valuable data
• Backup data after four to ten hours of data entry
• Backup media disc, file server, tape drives
• Providing backup for an organization
• Consider the nature of data and organizations
  policy
• One solution backup data to another PC on
  network, such as a file server. Servers are
  usually backed up by an IT department
• Providing backup for a small office
• backup data to a second hard drive (IDE, USB,
  another computer
• Utilize an online backup service (backup.com)

39
Tape Drives

• Advantages
• Inexpensive and convenient
• Large capacity (up to 800GB compressed)
• Disadvantage
• Sequential access, meaning that in order to read
  data from anywhere on the tape, you must start at
  the beginning of the tape and read until you come
  to the sought-after data.

40
Tape Drives

• Offer inexpensive, high capacity storage
• Advice use backup software to manage backups
• Main disadvantage data accessed sequentially
• Makes file retrieval slow and inconvenient
• A tape drive can be internal or external
• How a tape drive interfaces with a computer
• External or internal drive can use a SCSI bus
• External or internal drive can use a USB
  connection
• Internal drive can use parallel or serial ATA
  interface
• If using parallel ATA do not put on primary IDE
  channel, as it will slow up the primary system
  H.D.

41
Removable Drives

• Advantages
• Increases the overall storage capacity of a
  system
• Simplifies transfer of large files from one PC to
  another
• Makes it easy to backup and secure important
  files
• Can also be a security risk
• Drop height height device can fall and still be
  usable
• Half-life time for magnetic strength to weaken
  by half
• Example writable CDs have half-life of 30 years
• Examples Microdrive CF (4GB), jump drive (4GB),
  Zip drive (750GB and 8 foot drop height)

42
Fault Tolerance, Dynamic Volumes, and RAID

• Fault tolerance ability to respond to serious
  problem or fault so that data is not lost
• Example hardware failure or power outage
• RAID (redundant array of independent disks)
• System used to recovers from failure
• Also improves performance
• Two methods used to configure a hard drive
• Basic disk creates logical drives within fixed
  partitions
• Dynamic disk creates dynamic volumes
• Dynamic disks can only be read by Windows 2000/XP

43
Fault Tolerance, Dynamic Volumes, and RAID
(continued)

• Five types of dynamic volumes
• Simple primary partition on a basic disk
• Spanned can use space from two or more disks
• Increased disk space for a volume, but if 1 disk
  dies the volume is dead. (JBOD)
• Striped (RAID 0) data striping across two or
  more disks
• Writes to both disk non-sequentially so volume is
  faster by use of multiple spindles at once.
• Mirrored (RAID 1) duplicates data on another
  drive
• RAID 5 striping across drives and parity
  checking

44
Three ways to adapt a system to hardware RAID

• Motherboard IDE controller supports RAID
• Serial ATA Raid
• Parallel ATA Raid
• Install a RAID-compliant IDE controller
• If your motherboard does not support RAID.
• You must disable the motherboard IDE interface
  through CMOS
• Install a SCSI host adapter that supports RAID

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Figure 9-52 This motherboard supports RAID 0 and
RAID 1
46
Troubleshooting Multimedia Devices

• General guidelines
• Do not touch chips on circuit boards
• Do not touch disk surfaces where data is stored
• Do not stack components on top of one another
• Do not subject components to magnetic fields or
  ESD