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Meaning, Glossary and Acronym > Computer
Hardware
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
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