Ports

A port serves as an interface between the computer and other computers or peripheral devices. Physically the port is a special outlet on a piece of equipment which is a plug or cable.
There are a various amount of shapes such as

Round- PS2
Rectangular- Fire ware
Square- Telephone modem

The most common used peripherals these days are is the USB, which stands for Universal Serial Bus, this is used for the person to store data directly from the computer to the USB and use on a different computer, or to keep a back up of the work.

Serial Ports:
Serial ports allows the computer to share information with the outside world, the term serial refers to the data send via a single wire. The bits are sent one after another.

The data can be sent at random intervals, meaning there is no time limit of synchronization signal or clock is required.

Serial ports are normally built into the motherboard behind the casing. Serial connectors generally have 9 or 25 pins.

Parallel Port:
Parallel data transmission involves sending data at the same time on several wires. The parallel ports on personal computer can send up to 8 bits (one octel)

The first two parallel ports are allowed for speeds of 2.5mb/s.
Enhanced parallel ports have been development however to achieve higher speeds:

The EPP: Enhanced Parallel Port, which are designed to accomplish speeds of 8 to 16 Mbps
The ECP: Enhanced Capabilities Port, which are developed by Hewlett Packard and Microsoft.

This has the same character as the EPP with in addition a plug and a play feature, which allows the computer to be familiar with the connected peripherals.

Parallel ports like serial ports are built into the motherboard, and permit connection to an exterior element such as a printer.

Peripherals

A peripheral is a piece of computer hardware which is extra to a host computer, which means any computer except the computer.

The term also tends to be applied to devices that are enthusiastically up externally, typically through some structure of bus like a UBS.

Some examples of this are;
Joystick
Printers
Scanners

How different peripherals communicate with the computer?
Many peripherals have to be connected using a single standardized interface socket.
To improve the plug-and-play capabilities the computer permits devices to be connected and disconnected without the computer to be rebooted.

An advantage to use the peripherals is that when they are connected to the computer, there is no need to have any extra power supply and can allow other devices to be used without having to require a manufacture specific drives, which may need to be installed.

Processor (ALU), control unit and memory

The Arithmetic Logic Unit, ALU is one of the many components which is within a computer. The ALU performs mathematical, logical and decision operations in a computer and is the last processing performed by the processor.

Once the necessary information by the ALU has been processed it is sent to the computer memory.

Motherboard

Motherboards are the central circuit board which makes up a complex electronics system.
Motherboards are found in modern computers or modern laptops.

The motherboard is inside the processor and has important features for the computer to work such as memory banks, which gives the computer a lot of memory to store stuff on, BIOS which is the basic input and output system and IDE which is a software application which provides comprehensive facilities to the computer programmers for the software to work.

The chipset consists of two components or chips known as the Northbridge and Southbridge, though they may also be integrated into a single component, these chips will determine, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard and make sure they work to the extent.

Internal Memory

ROM- Read Only Memory is a class of storage media in computers and various other electronic devices. Data stored on the ROM cannot be modified, it is mainly used to distribute software which is very closely tied to specific hardware.

RAM- Random Access Memory which is a type of computer data storage that allows the user to store data and be accessed in any order, and can be returned in a constant line despite of the physical location.

How does the internal memory communicate with the computer?
The internal memory is inserted into the memory banks, which is located on the motherboard, through there the motherboard communicates with the computer.