Introduction of Ports in Computers

A port is basically a physical docking point which is basically used to connect the external devices to the computer, or we can say that A port act as an interface between the computer and the external devices, e.g., we can connect hard drives, printers to the computer with the help of ports.

Features of Computer ports:

• We can connect external devices to the computer with the help of ports and cables.
• These are basically slots on motherboard where we connect external devices, or we can plug in external devices through cables.
• Mouse, keyboards, printers, speakers are some examples of external devices that connected to the computer through ports.

Types of ports:

1. Serial ports –
A serial port is basically a serial communication interface through which information transforms one bit at a time. It is one of the oldest type of interfaces.

• These are basically used for external modems.
• These are basically available in two versions in market these are 9 pins, 25 pin models.
• Data travels at a speed of 115 kilo-bits per second.

2. Parallel ports –
A parallel port is basically a parallel communication interface through which information transforms multiple bits at a time.

• These are basically used to connect peripherals such as scanners or printers.
• These are also known as printer ports.
• These are available in a 25 pin model.
• Data travels at a speed of 150 kilo bits per second.

3. PS/2 ports –
These are basically 6 pin mini Din connector used to connect keyboard, mice to a PC compatible computers.

• These are basically used by old computers for connecting mouse or keyboard.
• These are called mouse ports.
• These ports are still favoured in organisation for security reason.
• These ports provides no restriction on key rollover.

4. Universal serial bus port –
It is basically a standard cable connection interface between computer and external device. USB is an industrial standard for short-distance digital data communication.

• Basically it can connect all types of external devices to the computer such as mouse, keyboard, printers, speakers etc.
• These ports were introduced in 1997.
• Minimum 2 ports are there in every computer system.
• Data basically travels at a speed of 14mb/s which is much faster than serial port.
• The devices that uses USB port gets power from a USB port.

5. VGA Ports –
VGA connector stands for Video Graphic Array connector, these are basically 15 pin connector available in many video-cards, computer, projectors etc.

• It is used to connect monitor to computer’s video card.
• It is 15 pin connector.
• These were introduced by IBM in 1987.
• VGA basically utilizes analog signal hence it can only be used to lower resolution or we can say VGA is only capable of lowering the resolution.

These are some of the common ports available in computer system. Except these there are many more ports available in computer. These are as follows:

1. Modem Port:
   These are basically used to connect PC’s modem to telephone networks.
2. Ethernet Port:
   These are basically used to connect Ethernet cables to the computer. In this data may travel with a speed of 10mb/s to 100 mb/s based on the network bandwidth.
3. Game Port:
   These ports are available in computer to connect joysticks which are now replaced by USB.
4. Digital Video Interface or we can say DVI Port these are basically used to connect flat panel LCD Monitor to the computer’s high end video graphics.
5. Sockets:
   Sockets are basically used to connect microphone or speakers to the sound card of the computer.
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