PRACTICAL - 82 :- To study various cards used in a Computer System.

Aim -  To study various cards used in a Computer System. 

(Ethernet Card, Sound  Card, Video/Graphics Card, Network Interface card ,TV Tuner Card, Accelerator card)

 

• Ethernet Card 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  An Ethernet card is one kind of network adapter. These adapters support the Ethernet standard for high-speed network connections via cables. Ethernet cards are sometimes known as network interface cards (NICs). The Ethernet card was created to build a Local Area Network (LAN). Once Ethernet cable is connected to the Ethernet cards of two or more computers over the LAN, one can transfer files and data. This can be carried out for external hardware such as printers and scanners when information from one computer needs to be transferred to another computer. 

• Sound Card 
  

A sound card (also known as an audio card) is a computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation, education, and entertainment (games). Many computers have sound capabilities built in, while others require additional expansion cards to provide for audio capability.

• Video/Graphics Card
  
  
  A video card, video adapter, graphics-accelerator card, display adapter or graphics card is an expansion card whose function is to generate and output images to a display. Many video cards offer added functions, such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, video capture, TV-tuner adapter, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, FireWire, light pen, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Other modern high performance video cards are used for more graphically demanding purposes, such as PC games.

• Network Interface Card
  
  
  A network interface card provides the computer with a dedicated, full-time connection to a network. Personal computers and workstations on a local area network (LAN) typically contain a network interface card specifically designed for the LAN transmission technology. In computer networking, a NIC provides the hardware interface between a computer and a network. A NIC technically is network adapter hardware in the form factor of an add-in card such as a PCI or PCMCIA card. Some NIC cards work with wired connections while others are wireless. Most NICs support either wired Ethernet or WiFi wireless standards. Ethernet NICs plug into the system bus of the PC and include jacks for network cables, while WiFi NICs contain built-in transmitters / receivers (transceivers). 

•  TV Tuner Card It allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk much like the digital video recorder (DVR) does. The interfaces for TV tuner cards are most commonly either PCI bus expansion card or the newer PCI Express (PCIe) bus for many modern cards. These cards typically include one or more software drivers to expose the cards' features, via various operating systems, to software applications that further process the video for specific purposes. As a class, the cards are used to capture baseband analog composite video, S-Video, and, in models equipped with tuners, RF modulated video. Unlike video editing cards, these cards tend to not have dedicated hardware for processing video beyond the analog-to-digital conversion. Most, but not all, video capture cards also support one or more channels of audio.

• Accelerator card A printed circuit board that enhances a computer's performance by substituting a faster microprocessor without replacing the entire motherboard and associated components. A graphic accelerator is a type of video adapter that contains its own processor to boost performance levels. These processors are specialized for computing graphical transformations, so they achieve better results than the general-purpose CPU used by the computer. In addition, they free up the computer's CPU to execute other commands while the graphics accelerator is handling graphics computations. The popularity of graphical applications, and especially multimedia applications, has made graphics accelerators not only a common enhancement, but a necessity. Most computer manufacturers now bundle a graphics accelerator with their mid-range and high-end systems.