On 17-May-04, at 5:11 PM, Jennifer Worgan wrote:
Are I/O boards along the same line? How many different types of
analog/digital cards are there? Below are mentioned modem and sound cards.
I/O boards may be analog or digital. In the most trivial of cases, like a parallel port, the signal is quite similar to those between the chips in your computer (at least it is in the case of the Apple II). These are, of course, digital. In other cases, the signal will still be digital but the characteristics will be different. This is the case for serial ports. These types of boards are typically used to control other types of computer components, like printers and terminals, where the transition from digital, to analog, and back to digital would make circuits more complex.
Analog boards tend to do interesting things which aren't necessarily associated with computers, like reading data and controlling machinery. They can also be used for I/O devices where analog signals are more convenient. That would be the case with audio boards where you are, for all intents and purposes, recording the (analog) vibrations of a microphone or producing (analog) vibrations in a speaker. Until recently, most monitors were also analog. In that case, I *think* the issue would be with bandwidth.
Byron.
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