
Computer interfacing
A question of speed
The second case concerns two devices, the computer and
a peripheral, that both handle digital signals but have
quite different operating speeds. The best example is
when a printer is driven from a computer. The latter is
capable of working at quite incredible speed, often ex-
ecuting thousands of instructions in a few milliseconds.
The printer, by contrast, is incredibly slow. Even the
fastest printer is virtually at a standstill compared with
the speed of the computer. Yet somehow it is essential
to synchronise the two so that the printer gets its sup-
ply of data to carry out its task. An interface i ...