Microprocessor and Microcontroller Assignment

Submitted by- Aaditya gaurav

RA1711008010135
Submitted to-Dr. S
Suresh

Q1) Explain in detail about different types of Floppy Disk Memory

Ans- A floppy disk drive is a computer component that was designed to read and write to floppy
disks that were used for removable storage. The most popular type of floppy disk drive is the 3
½-inch drive, which is still in limited use today. The floppy disk drive has been replaced by other
types of drives such as CD drives, DVD drives as well as USB flash drives. There are many
different types of floppy disk drives that have come and gone over the years.

5 ¼ -Inch Drive

A 5 ¼-inch floppy disk drive was common on personal computers that were produced during
the 1980's and were still included on computers in the early 1990's. A 5 ¼ -inch floppy disk
could store between 360 kilobytes and 1.2 megabytes of data. Some 5 ½-floppy disks could be
modified and used to write data to both sides of the disk. This led to manufacturers producing
double-sided drives that could read both sides of the disk.

3 ½ -Inch Drive

A 3 ½-inch floppy drive is considered a floppy drive because the diskette uses a magnetic floppy
disk that is encased in plastic. A 3 ½-inch floppy disk is capable of storing 730 kilobytes on a
double density disk and 1.44 megabytes on a high density disk. On older computers the only
way to load programs such as Windows 3.0 was to use multiple disks to install the program.

Zip Drive

Zip drives were introduced by the Iomega corporation in the mid-1990s. A zip disk was capable
of storing 100 megabytes, 250 megabytes and even 750 megabytes on a single disk. Zip drives
were mainly available as a peripheral that could be added to an existing system. A zip drive
carried a high price tag which limited its use and eventually led to its decline as a popular
storage medium.
Formatting

Each type of floppy disk needed to be formatted in order to store data on the disk. Formatting a
diskette uses a process called a low-level format. This will write sectors to the disk that are a
specific byte size which is normally 512 bytes per sector. This process in done by the hardware
that is contained in the floppy disk drive which allows the operating system to read and write to
the formatted disk.

Legacy

The 5 ¼-inch and 3 ½-inch floppy disk drives are nearly obsolete as a storage medium. A floppy
disk drive can still be used to boot to a command prompt in the event of a system problem.
Floppy disks are still sometimes used for computer BIOS upgrades, but even that use is being
phased out. Manufacturers of computers today are no longer installing a floppy drive in new
machines.

Q2) Explain in detail about Hard Disk memory system

Ans- A hard drive fits inside a computer case and is firmly attached with the use of braces and
screws to prevent it from being jarred as it spins. Typically, it spins at 5,400 to 15,000 RPM. The
disk moves at an accelerated rate, allowing data to be accessed immediately. Most hard drives
operate on high speed interfaces using serial ATA (SATA) or serial attached technology. When
the platters rotate, an arm with a read/write head extends across the platters. The arm writes
new data to the platters and reads new data from them. Most hard drives use enhanced
integrated drive electronics (EIDE) including cables and connectors to the motherboard. All data
is stored magnetically, allowing information to be saved when power is shut off.

Hard drives need a read only memory (ROM) controller board to instruct the read/write heads
how, when and where to move across the platters. Hard drives have disks stacked together and
spin in unison. The read/write heads are controlled by an actuator, which magnetically reads
from and writes to the platters. The read/write heads float on a film of air above the platters.
Both sides of the platters are used to store data. Each side or surface of one disk is called a
head, with each one divided into sectors and tracks. All tracks are the same distance from the
center of the disk. Collectively they comprise one cylinder. Data is written to a disk starting at
the furthest track. The read/write heads move inward to the next cylinder once the first
cylinder is filled.

A hard drive is divided into one of more partitions, which can be further divided into logical
drives or volumes. Usually a master boot record (MBR) is found at the beginning of the hard
drive and contains a table of partition information. Each logical drive contains a boot record, a
file allocation table (FAT) and a root directory for the FAT file system.

Q3)Explain in detail about Optical Disk Memory System.

Ans- An optical disc is an electronic data storage medium that can be written to and read from
using a low-powered laser beam. Originally developed in the late 1960s, the first optical disc,
created by James T. Russell, stored data as micron-wide dots of light and dark. Russell's optical
storage system used a powerful backlight to read the dots through a transparent sheet of
material on which the dots were encoded.
In later optical disc systems, a laser read the dots and the data was converted to an electrical
signal. Then the data was converted to audio or visual output. However, the technology didn't
appear in the marketplace until Philips and Sony came out with the compact disc (CD) in 1982.
Since then, there has been a constant succession of optical disc formats, first in CD formats and
followed by a number of digital versatile disc (DVD) formats.

Initially, an optical disc could hold much more data than similarly sized magnetic storage media.
Increases in hard disk drive (HDD) technology, and particularly the introduction of solid-state
memory, helped magnetic media capacity outgrow optical discs. However, optical disc storage
is less likely to degrade over time than magnetic storage, such as HDD or magnetic tape, so it is
often used for archival or cold storage.

Storage capacity has increased with each new generation of optical media. The newest
standards, such as Blu-ray, offer up to 27 gigabytes (GB) of storage on a single-sided, 12-
centimeter disc. Optical discs are inexpensive to manufacture and data stored on them is
relatively impervious to most environmental threats, such as power surges or magnetic
disturbances. That makes optical disc storage well-suited for archival storage. In 2016, Sony
announced a disc based on Blu-ray technology that can hold 3.3 terabytes (TB) of data.

Q4) Explain in detail about Run Length Limited (RLL) Storage.

Ans- Run-length limited or RLL coding is a line coding technique that is used to send arbitrary
data over a communications channel with bandwidth limits. RLL codes are defined by four main
parameters: m, n, d, k. The first two, m/n, refer to the rate of the code, while the remaining two
specify the minimal d and maximal k number of zeroes between consecutive ones. This is used
in both telecommunication and storage systems that move a medium past a fixed recording
head.
Specifically, RLL bounds the length of stretches (runs) of repeated bits during which the signal
does not change. If the runs are too long, clock recovery is difficult; if they are too short, the
high frequencies might be attenuated by the communications channel. By modulating the data,
RLL reduces the timing uncertainty in decoding the stored data, which would lead to the
possible erroneous insertion or removal of bits when reading the data back. This mechanism
ensures that the boundaries between bits can always be accurately found (preventing bit slip),
while efficiently using the media to reliably store the maximal amount of data in a given space.
Early disk drives used very simple encoding schemes, such as RLL (0,1) FM code, followed by RLL
(1,3) MFM code which were widely used in hard disk drives until the mid-1980s and are still
used in digital optical discs such as CD, DVD, MD, Hi-MD and Blu-ray. Higher density RLL (2,7)
and RLL (1,7) codes became the de facto industry standard for hard disks by the early 1990s.

Q5) Explain about Pen Drives.

Ans- A pen drive, or a USB flash drive, is a portable data-storage device. Pen drives have
replaced the floppy drives of old and have become the most popular data-storage devices
among consumers. Micro, lightweight and handy, a pen drive can be easily carried from place
to place by students, professionals, academicians and independent tech consultants. Currently
available pen drives with storage capacities ranging from 8GB and 32GB can be used to store
graphics-heavy documents, photos, music files and video clips

Transfer Files
A pen drive plugged into a USB port can be used as an interfacing device to transfer files,
documents and photos to a PC. Similarly, select files can be transferred from a pen drive to any
workstation.

Portability
The lightweight and "micro" characteristics of a pen drive make it possible to carry it from place
to place.

Backup Storage
With most pen drives now having password encryption features, important family information,
medical records and photos can be backed up on them.
Transport Data

Academicians can easily transport large files and lectures on a pen drive and access them
anywhere. Independent PC technicians can store utility tools, programs and files on a high-
speed 32 GB pen drive and move from site to site.

Promotional Tool

Many companies and businesses are now using pen drives as effective tools to promote sales
literature and other marketing-communication content. These handy pen drives emblazoned
with corporate logos and visual imagery, and can be easily disseminated at exhibitions, trade
shows and conferences.