Chapter 14. External I/O Interfaces

Introduction to Input/Output Ports

This chapter covers the primary external peripheral input/output ports on modern and legacy PC systems. This includes the legacy serial and parallel ports that have been standard on PCs since the beginning, as well as the universal serial bus (USB, which has replaced the older serial and parallel ports), IEEE 1394 (also called FireWire or i.LINK), and Thunderbolt Technology interfaces. IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Although eSATA is also considered an external I/O interface, it is a derivative of Serial ATA (SATA), which is mainly used as an internal storage device interface. SATA is covered in Chapter 7, “The ATA/IDE Interface.” Small ...

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