A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PCFifth Edition
Chapter 11
Multimedia Devices and Mass Storage
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Multimedia on a PC
Goal
To create or reproduce lifelike representations of sight and sound
Challenge
Data storage is digital
Sights and sounds are analog
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CPU Technologies for Multimedia MMX (Multimedia Extensions)
Used by Pentium MMX and Pentium II
SSE (Streaming SIMD Extension) Used by the Pentium III
SSE2 For the Pentium 4 (which can also use MMX and
SSE)
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Multimedia Devices
Sound cards
Digital cameras
MP3 players
Video capture cards
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Sound Cards Functions: record/play/edit sound Ports for speakers and microphone Sound-blaster compatible: considered as the sound
card standard Sampling accuracy is critical to performance Stages of computerized sound
Convert from analog to digital (digitize) Store digital data in compressed data file Reproduce or synthesize sound (digital to analog)
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Digitizing Sound
Analog sound is converted to digital sound by sampling Sample size
• 8 bits: represent 256 levels of signals
• 16 bits: represent 65,536 levels of signals Sampling rate(Hz):
• 22 KHz for ears
• 44 KHz for music CDs
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Compressing Sound
MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer 3) Lossy compression standard for music Reduce size of a sound file by as much as 1:24
without noticeable degradation in quality
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Hands-on Project: Install a Sound Card pp. 478 - 481
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Digital Cameras
Scans the field of image set by the picture taker and translates the light signals into digital values
Form factors
# of pixels: 3.1M, 5M
color: real color (32 bits/pixel)
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Digital Images
Displayed on the screen Screen size: 1024 * 768 pixels
Printed out on paper Printer resolution: 300 dpi (dots/inch) Photo paper size: 5 inch x 7 inch # of pixels on the photo paper: 5 x 7 x 300 x 300 =
3 M
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Flash RAM Cards Flash technology: data is retained without a
battery, e.g., SmartMedia, SanDisk, Sony Memory Sticks
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MP3 Players Devices that play MP3 files
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Video Capture Cards Captures input from camcorder or directly
from TV Features to look for:
IEEE 1394 (FireWire) port to interface with digital camcorder
Data transfer rates Capture resolution and color-depth capabilities Ability to transfer data back to digital camcorder
or VCR Stereo audio jacks Video-editing software
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Video Compression Standards
MPEG-1: TV/VHS quality for business/home applications
MPEG-2: DVD/HDTV quality MPEG-4: high-quality video transmissions
over the Internet
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Optical Storage Technology Patterns of tiny pits on disc surface represent
bits, which are readable by a laser beam
Major optical storage technologies
CD: use CDFS (Compact Disc File System) or UDF (Universal Disk Format)
DVD: use only UDF
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CDs Data are stored as pits (recessed areas) and
lands(raised areas)
The bits are read by a laser beam
Multisession feature Data can be written to the disc at different times
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How a CD Drive Can Interface with the Motherboard
EIDE interface (most common)
SCSI interface with SCSI host adapter
Portable drive; plug into external port on PC
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CD-R and CD-RW CD-R (CD-recordable)
Enables “burning” your own CDs Cannot overwrite Inexpensive Can be read by all CD-ROM drives
CD-RW (CD-rewritable) Allows overwriting old data with new data Cannot always be read by older drives
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Hands-on Project: Install a CD Drive pp. 491
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DVD (Digital Video Disc)
Has large storage capacity (8.5 GB one side; 17 GB both sides)
Uses UDF file system
Uses MPEG-2 video compression; requires MPEG-2 controller to decode compressed data
Stores audio in Dolby AC-2 compression
Recently: HD-DVD and read-writable DVDs
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Hardware Used for Backups and Fault Tolerance On standalone PCs or small servers
Tapes
Removable drives
On a PC connected to file server
Back up data to a file server
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Removable Drives
Can be internal or external Advantages
Increase overall storage capacity Easy to move large files between computers Convenient medium for making backups Easy to secure important files
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Types of Removable Drives Newer
IBM Microdrive
JumpDrive by Lexar Media
Iomega HDD drive by Iomega
Older Iomega 3½-inch Zip drive
SuperDisk by Imation
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Hands-on Project: Installing a Zip Drive Similar to installing a hard drive
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Fault Tolerance and RAID
Fault tolerance Computer’s ability to respond to a fault or
catastrophe RAID (redundant array of independent disks)
Stores data over an array of disks Appears as a single drive to the users Can automatically recover from a failure May improve the performance
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RAID-0 Data strips are written evenly to disk arrays
High performance If one disk fails, the data cannot recovered
0 1 2 nn+1 n+2 n+3 2n
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Data are mirrored
If one disk fails, the data can be retrieved from the mirrored disk
RAID-1
0 n+11
n
n+2
2n
0 n+11
n
n+2
2n
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RAID-5 Data strips are written evenly to disk arrays
High performance If one disk fails, the data can be recovered by using
parity disk
0 1 2 nn+1 n+2 n+3 2n
ParityDisk
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Dynamic Volumes The fault tolerance method first introduced by
Windows 2000 Type of dynamic volumes
Simple volume: normal disk drives Spanned volume
Striped volume (RAID 0) Mirrored volume (RAID 1) RAID-5 volume