Compare and Contrast Common Computer Connector Types

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Hi. Welcome back to domain to

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on dhe. We're going to be looking in module 2.2. Now

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2.2

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asked us to compare and contrast common computer connected types.

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So we're gonna look at how to connect video to your display,

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how to connect audio speakers and microphones and so on, and then the various general purpose connected types, such as USB and FireWire.

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So let's start with video connectors.

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We're gonna talk about v d A d d I H d m I display port and a few others. What has happened over time, of course, is that the video capabilities have got better and better and better from fairly low resolution video. When IBM compatible PCs first came out

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to extremely high definition displays that are available to date,

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as that has happened, the technology has evolved in the types of connectors have had to be improved over time.

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But first we're gonna look at some connector types that you're not going to find on PCs

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compared to the high definition displays were used to today. These old connector types were about to look at

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provided very low resolution.

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In fact, they were not commonly used with computers,

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but you would find them on older TVs

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and the devices you might connect to them, such as VCR's videocassette recorders on DVD players

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off these, the highest resolution of the RGB connectors that you will see. And you could tell fine bells on TV's or DVDs or Blue right players.

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So firstly, there was composite video, also known as an RC A connector. This was a single cable,

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pretty low resolution, and typically it was colored yellow,

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slightly better than that Waas s video. This used a four pin didn't connector,

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had multiple wires and was able to transmit high resolution signals.

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And then there was component, also known as an RC A connector.

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So it's the same type of plug as the composite video. But as you can see, there are three different plugs

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and one is red, one is blue and one is green. They obviously have to be plugged into the appropriate ports on your monitor. Another device

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on these do give you a fairly high resolution, and you will still find these on things like games, consoles and on TVs as well,

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although again not very common on PCs.

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So one of the most widely used connector types for computers and their displays

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was VD, eh? Introduced way back in 1987 but still in use today. Which shows you how versatile it waas

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you may find today, though, that the latest laptops don't have VD A ports, and also your computers may not. Desktop computers may not, either.

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Most displays, though, usually have a B G, a input available.

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So this was a 15 pin

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connector known as a D sub miniature connector,

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and this was good and enough fast enough to support full high definition.

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And this was an analog interface. All the other interfaces we're going to look at after this were all digital interface is, and we'll talk about the benefits of that when we get to it.

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Okay,

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starting with Devi I.

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So

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as we moved from analog displaced to digital ones, giving us higher quality and resolution,

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a new interface was needed.

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Devi I was developed as an interface that could transmit both analog signals for older displays

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on digital signals for newer displays.

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As you can see, there are versions of Devi I for analog signals. That's abbreviated as Devi I dash a

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a digital version known as Devi I Dash D

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and where a device supports both. There is D B I. I.

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Although this has been popular for many years, it has increasingly being replaced by another technology called H. D M I

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and Display Port.

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So let's go in and look at those next

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So H Demise stands for high definition multimedia interface.

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This

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interface differs somewhat from

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the previous one we've seen because they only transmit video.

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HTM. I also transmits audio through the cable,

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and it can't support four K resolution. That's the very high resolution our ultra high resolution TVs and monitors that we're now starting to get.

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And it can also transmit three D video If you have a three D TV and a three D DVD player or something like that.

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This is a digital only interface, so it's not compatible with PGA, which was analog or any earlier systems.

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But if you need to

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connect H. D M I two v g A, you could get converted, for example, you may find that your laptop only has an HD of my connection available,

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but your monitor requires a V G a connection.

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In that case, you can't simply get a cable with just the right plugs. At each end, you need what's called an active converter,

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and that active converter will convert analog signals to digital or digital to analog.

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HTM I also has smaller versions, so there's many

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and micro versions of this. You'll often find those types of ports on small devices,

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smartphones, tablets or digital cameras.

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One of the point to note about H. D. M I is it is a proprietary into face.

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Rather than being developed by some industry

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standards organization.

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It was developed by a group of vendors, including people like Panasonic and Sony

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as a proprietary into face.

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If anybody implements H d M I,

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they have to pay a license fee to those people who invented it

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as a reaction to that. I guess

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there was an open source version of this developed

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and this was called display port

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being open source. It doesn't require the pavement of any royalties for anybody to implement this. So what we're starting to find now on computers is instead of having HD my ports, they will have display ports sockets.

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This is

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digital on dhe, compatible with H. D. M I and D V II on D V I. D.

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And because it's compatible, it means if you have to connect two different devices, let's say one supports H. D M I, and the other supports display port.

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You can get a simple cable with the right plug it each end. You don't need an active converter. In this case,

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Thunderbolt was developed by Apple and Intel.

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What's interesting about this is it's a general purpose. Connect up.

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It's not just for transmitting video and sound to your display.

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It can also be used to connect peripheral devices such as external hard disks.

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That is not true of any of the previous connector types. We've looked at their strictly for transmitting video or in the coast of EJ Deon My, for also transmitting audio.

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The implementation that Apple went with

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with versions one in two uses a miniature our display port connect out or mini display port connector.

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Computer display ports

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can be a built into the motherboard, and that's what you're seeing in the top picture

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when there is a V G, a port built into the motherboard.

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If you don't have the appropriate types of video connectors available, on the motherboard, you can always install an expansion card, which looks like

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the lower picture,

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and that may give you additional ports and may actually give you better performance than

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the one that's built into the motherboard.

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So there are the B G A ports,

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both on the motherboard on the left hand side and as part of an expansion card. On the right hand side,

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there is a DV aiport,

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and there is an S video port.

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If you were to look at the back of a display monitor

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that you would see similar ports there

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in this example, we can see there are multiple connected ports on the back of this monitor.

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So there's the B G a port.

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There is an HD on my port,

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and there is a DV aiport

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moving on from video. Let's talk about general connector types

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for connecting many different types of devices,

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so we're gonna have a look at the original serial parallel and PS two connector types. All of these are pretty much phased out now. They are legacy connected types.

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We'll also look at us, be by a wire is Satya

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and for connecting to

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telephone systems or the network. There's the R J 45 Archer 11.

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We'll also have a look at how you connect audio devices and power to your device.

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So just a word. First on the idea off serial or parallel communication.

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In the early days of computing,

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there were two types of interface is there was a serial interface and there was parallel interfaces

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in a serial interface.

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The data is sent along a single wire one bit at that time.

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In a parallel interface, you literally have multiple wires bonded together, and each carries one bit of time in parallel.

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So in the early days of computing,

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they assumed because it seemed intuitive that the parallel interfaces would be faster.

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And it was true that parallel interfaces

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that were implemented at first were faster than the serial interface. Is they implemented

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what they found? There was technology developed and time. My daughter is that parallel communication creates too much of an overhead

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because your data is traveling across multiple wires,

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it has to arrive all at the same moment at the other end,

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and if it doesn't things are held up.

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You also need to Sadik extra signals down the cable to keep the data synchronized across all the wires.

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As a result, what happened in the industry is they've moved back towards serial interfaces.

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So U S B, for example, which is you pick you a CE used almost everywhere these days

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is actually a serial communication mechanism.

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U S B stands for Universal Serial Bus.

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So the original serial ports were known as

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comports or but sometimes by their designation of Rs 232

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So this is a legacy connected type

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offer not available on your computers.

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And when it was available, it was primarily used to connect printers or modems.

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Modems were devices that were used to gain access to the Internet through a normal telephone line.

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One more thing you might notice about this is that in this case, the socket is male

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and the plug is female.

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So the top picture shows what the socket looks like at the back of the PC, you could see the pins sticking out,

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and the lower picture shows the end of the cable. As you can see, that's a female connection.

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This standard was extremely slow compared to the standards where speeds were used to today

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also a legacy standard was the parallel connector and parallel cables.

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So again, this is often not.

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They're on newer machines, often missing on your machines.

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This was typically used to connect printers or scanners to a computer,

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and yet another legacy connected type is PS two. We already came across this in the last module when we looked at how keyboards and mouses

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Lisa's My says,

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how mouse and keyboard is connected to

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your PC.

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And we also saw in the last module that although both off those sockets look identical,

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um, the color coding tells you which is which. So the purple one is for the keyboard and

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the green one is for the mouse.

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But these days again, you may find you don't have those connectors on any given computer,

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because these days, keyboards on the mouse are connected using us speak.

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Which brings us to USB.

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This is by far the most popular type of connector available.

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It connects everything from keyboards to printers that scanners that cameras whatever you can name virtually hard drives.

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USB has evolved through three major versions, and the big differences between those are really the speeds at which it operates,

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so U. S. B. 3.1 is the latest standard for us beat.

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USB also provides power to a device as well as a data connection.

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USB cables at one end having what's called a type A connector,

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the type A connector plugs into the USB port on

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the computer.

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So what you see in the top picture there, those that there's a whole bank? Oh, I think there's six USB socket

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and what you see the lower picture is a USB cable with a type A plug,

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and that would plug into any one of those six USB connections.

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At the other end of the cable where you connect the device,

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you have type B connectors,

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so Type B connectors for visions one and two of us be were identical,

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but version three of us being did use the new type be connected type, which you can see in the picture.

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Obviously, these are not interchangeable.

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If you have a socket for us beat, too.

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You cannot pluck a USB three cable into it,

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and you can't do it the other way around. Neither the USB three cable cannot be plugged into a USB two or USB one socket

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inversions. One in two of us be There was also a size known as Mini B.

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This is now deprecate ID, so you should not find this on any new devices that you purchase.

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Micro B is very common.

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Virtually every smartphone and tablet will have a micro be

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socket available

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on Dhe Micro. Be plugs can be plugged into those

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dia.

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You'll sing again that USB three changed the shape of the plug.

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But here's the odd thing here.

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If you have a USB two or USB one plug,

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it can plug into a USB three socket,

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but not the other way around. A USB three

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plug cannot be plugged into a USB two or one socket.

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FireWire is a technology very civility. USB.

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It connects and powers many different device types, just like us. Beat

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FireWire

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Adoption was largely driven by Apple.

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It was ratified as a standard by IEEE called 30 94.

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IEEE starts for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,

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and they have defined many standards that are used for networking and computing. Over the years,

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fire wire connectors can have very ignite love numbers of pins, so afore pin connector provides just a data connection, but no power.

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The six pin connector provide power and data,

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and then there was a updated version off FireWire known its FireWire to or alternatively is 30 94 B,

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and this was twice as faster the original. The original implementation operated 400 megabits per second.

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FireWire two or 30 94 B, if you prefer, operated at 800 megabits per second.

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This technology, though, is faith being phased out by Apple on, replaced by a interface and connector known as Thunderbolt, which we'll get to in a moment.

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Um, the other interesting thing I want to point out to you here is it's not always called FireWire.

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Sony, for example, called said I link when they implemented in their devices, and Texas Instruments calls it links.

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The generic name of it is

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at 30 94.

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Sutter is normally an internal bus, meaning that it's used inside your computer to connect internal components together.

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Primarily, it's used to connect disk drives to the motherboard so you can connect hard drives but also CD and DVD drives to the motherboard. Using Satya

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e Satya is a way of connecting external devices to a computer

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so

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If you haven't e satya port

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and let's say you have an external hard drive which supports the Satya,

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you would plug it into the E Satya port on your computer.

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The speed you get are similar to us. Be version three, and it's much faster than FireWire.

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R J 45 connectors are used to plug your computer into the Wired Network.

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R J 11 connectors are used to plug telephones and modems into the telephone. Jack on the Wall

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R J 45 large 11 connectors look similar,

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but if you look carefully, you'll see that the R J 11 plug and socket are kind of square,

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whereas the R J 45 is more rectangular.

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Fortunately, you cannot fit the wrong type of plug into the room. The wrong type of suck. It simply won't go.

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In any case these days, the use of modems, which use R J 11 connectors is unlikely.

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In the days before cable, we used to connected the Internet using devices called mode apps when they were plugged into your normal telephone lines to access the Internet.

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Audio connectors may be built into the motherboard, just like video, or be on a separate expansion card

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audio connectors provide for connecting your speakers on microphones using standard 3.5 millimeter Jax,

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These 3.5 millimeter Jax that you see for audio devices are color coded on that color coding is standardized across the industry,

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so pink is for plugging in your microphone.

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The lime green is for plugging in your front speakers.

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The top left corner. That round black socket there is for plugging in your rear speakers. If you have set up surround sound, so you have two speakers of the front into it. The back

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the orange is for playing in a subwoofer for those floor shaking bass sounds. When you play games or watch movies,

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the blue is for audio in. So, for example, if you have audio coming from something like an MP three player, you can plug that in there if you want to record that on your computer.

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But also you could plug in, for example, of musical instrument like an electric guitar,

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that square black box in the bottom left corner. There the S P D I f.

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What this does is it transmits the sound as digital rather than analog. I put

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and you plug in an optical cable so the sound is converted into lightwaves than sent down that cable.

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So the most common use for that would be to transmit sound, saying to a TV, which has an SPD i f. Input. So you get very clear sound, or you can plug it into an amplifier. If you have high fight, set up a home with hi fi speakers and a hi fi amplifier.

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The hi fi amplifier probably will give you much better quality than the converter that's within the PC itself.

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It will convert. The amplified would convert the digital signal to audio and then send it out to your hi fi speakers.

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Power chords are pretty much standardized for desktop computers.

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The socket looks like the top picture there,

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where you plug in the mains and the bottom picture shows the cable that you plug it in

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for. Laptops usually have an external power supply, so you have a little brick. We plug one ended to the mains, and the other end has a barrel connected that plugs into your laptop.

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One thing to watch out for here is that barrel connector is not the same size on every laptop,

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so you can't take it for granted that the power adapter for one laptop or plug into the socket on another laptop.

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As far as monitors go,

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well, we have

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some monitors that use the same power called as the desktop computer we just saw.

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But others used these types of barrel connectors that you see here. There are three major types.

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So this module we looked at the various types of connectors used to provide power to computing devices and to connect peripherals to computers.

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We saw that the video connector has evolved from veejay to Devi. I do HTM eye on display port.

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We saw the standard 3.5 millimeter Jack's use for audio connections,

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and we looked at general purpose connectors and saw that USB is very versatile because you could use it to connect a huge variety of peripherals to computers