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You need to be familiar with external connections and the various connectors that are used on a PC. Ah, as you take the exam, and I know this is kind of interesting because there are so many different little holes and places to stick things on a PC nowadays. So let's just go through these and ah talk about them and then I'll show you some pictures of them. You do need to be able to recognize these visually and you need to just have a general basic understanding of, of these different connectors and connections. So let's just go through them here. First of all, there are six major types that you need to be familiar with. Now I'll talk about some of the newer ones that you might see on the exam in a different video but for now let's stick with the six majors. Okay. First of all is the DIN connection, the USB connection, FireWire, DD, RJ and audio. Now, each one of these has kind of, they go through times where they're, they're the hot connection and then they kind of fall out of favor, or some other technology takes over and we've seen this happen so, um, it's kind of interesting to watch this take place. Let's start off and talk about nomenclature first of all. Ah, plugs, ports, jacks, and connections. Now, we all interchange these words and it can make it kind of confusing for a new person coming into the industry to know what they're talking about. So let's go through this real simply. First of all, a plug is a part with something that's inserted into something. It's just a little device that's got something protruding out that we stick into the computer or into a device. So that's a plug. Pretty straightforward. A port is what a plug is inserted into. A port basically is a hole in the computer or a device that's the proper shape and we stick something into it. Now, what's interesting though is, a jack is another word for a port. And this was real kind of um, bizarre, but it just happens this way. For example, you don't hear it called an audio port, you hear it called an audio jack. And you don't hear it called the USB jack, it's a USB port, and so we interchange these with certain devices and I don't think anybody really can explain why, but we just do. So port and jack, for the most part, are interchangeable. And then a connector is a generic term for either a plug or a port. And so, just make sure you understand kind of the ah, the, the gist of those. Now let's start off and talk about a DIN connector. These were the way that keyboards especially were connected to the very early PCs ah and even the mice and they were large connectors, and now we have mini-DIN connectors. And these are also called PS2 connections if you will, but if you'll notice I've got a picture of a female DIN connector and a male DIN connector, and um, these have a number of pins, you'll see all the different numbers of pins. They have this little vertical tab here to help you line it up and make sure your pins are lined up. DINS have ah kind of fallen out of favor. They're still on the backs of many PCs, but we're using USB to connect mice and keyboards, wireless things, and so forth. But these were generally used to connect ah the keyboards and mice to the computers. Now, USB has taken over. Ah, the USB technology, USB 2.0 and high speed and all that, has really made using various components and plug-in parts on a computer very popular. USB stands for Universal Stereo Bus. It is the most common general purpose connector used on PCs now. Ah, and now, and I'm, we'll probably mention in this video connectors on the back of the PC. Ah, understand when I say that that's kind of the old school, ah, old world still talking. Um, connectors that used to just be on the back are now put on the front for convenience, and it's like every time you buy a new computer there's about 14 more USB ports on there somewhere, so USB has become very popular. It comes in three different sizes and you need to be familiar with these. The first one is A, then B, and then mini-B, you would think that they'd call it C, but not so. They called it mini-B, don't ask me why. Now, the advantages of USB are pretty simple. Number one they're hot swappable. Before USB if we plugged the keyboard or a mouse into the computer you usually had to reboot the computer for that device to work. With USB you simply connect the device and the operating system and the hardware is detected, and on and on and on, and everything just kind of happens. Something else that's interesting is USB devices usually get their power through the USB connection, so you don't have to have another plug, unless it's something that requires a whole lot of energy like a hard drive, or DVD burner, or something. A lot of USB devices get their power directly through the USB connection. A good example of this is for example if you have an iPod. You just simply connect your iPod through the USB port, it charges the battery, gets its power, and all that sort of thing. We see it with cell phones. Let's talk about the different USB connections, now. Here you see a picture of the USB A connection. This is probably the most ah, popular, the most easily recognizable connector on the computer today, and um, it's a little square rectangle shape and it's ah pretty straightforward, and again, most common USB type connector. Now on the other end of that cable usually, opposite end of a USB A, you will often see a USB B, and notice this is a little square one with a little house-top type design. And this is always on the end of ah, the cable that connects to a device. So, again, if you have a um USB hard drive, ah, you will see this type connector goes into the actual hard drive, okay. Now, one bit of information you will never see a USB connector, a USB B connector, pardon me, on the PC itself. You just won't see that happen. Now, the last one is the USB mini-B and just from the picture here, you probably recognize this already. This lets you make USB connections to small devices, and these are devices that are really too small for the USB A size, or even the B size. This is like ah, digital cameras, cell phones, those sorts of things. So it's pretty easy to remember. This is the mini-B, it's the smallest one. So those are mostly external connections. I'll finish these ah in the next video, external connections, part 2.