The PC Doctor's Fix-it-Yourself Guide- P5: A technical director for a UK-based computer company who teaches such courses as Caring for Your PC has developed prescriptions for treating sick PCs. Arguing the benefits of fixing it yourself rather than relying on experts, his mission is to empower users with trouble- shooting and safe repair skills. | CHAPTER 1 What s What the Anatomy of a PC 9 Speakers can be powered in different ways Many speakers are powered from the sound card and need no other power supply. The volume and quality of output from these can be quite poor. Larger speakers might require batteries to run. I don t recommend these as the cost of running them is high. Speakers powered by the main outlet are very common nowadays. This allows the speakers to have a good output range and power. These are the best type to use. Microphone Like speakers a microphone isn t an essential part of the PC but is quite useful. Along with speakers microphones are becoming more and more common as people use their PCs to communicate with family and friends over the Internet. Like speakers they vary tremendously in quality and price. Microphones are connected to PCs using a mm jack monaural connector not stereo it has fewer connection segments on the actual connector and the connections are usually color-coded pink. Look for this symbol Printer Although nonessential a printer is connected to the majority of PCs. Even with the explosion in Internet use paper output is still common and a widely used way to output material from your PC. Recently printers capable of high-quality color output have become available making printing pictures and images commonplace. While there is a staggering array of choice available when it comes to printers the connection choices are limited to two common types The most common way to connect a printer to a PC used to be via a wide 25-pin DB-25 connector. This port was also known as a parallel port. 10 The PC Doctor s Fix-It-Yourself Guide The parallel port has now been overtaken in popularity by the faster easier-to-use and more versatile USB port. This port is usually color-coded burgundy. The printer port symbol looks like this Many printers on the market can be connected to either a parallel or USB port depending on your PC s capability what cables you have available and which you
