On 17-May-04, at 11:06 AM, Jennifer Worgan wrote:
please forgive my ignorance - what is an analog/digital converter card -
what does it do?
Something which is analog varies continuously, like the volume knob on a stereo or the hands on an analog clock. Something which is digital varies in discrete amounts, like the on off switch on a stereo or a digital clock. The most important bits of your computer are digital. They only know two states, which may be described as on and off.
Modems and sound cards are common analog/digital converter cards. They convert a stream of digital data, which may represent a file you are uploading or a song you want to hear, into sound (which is analog). Of course, you can always do the opposite -- which would be downloading a file or recording some sound. But modems and sound cards are rarely called analog/digital converters because that would just confuse people. Besides, the A/D converter is only part of a modem.
From my experience, an A/D converter is usually used for data acquisition in a laboratory setting: if you want to measure the temperature of something, you would find a device which converts a temperature into a "voltage" and an A/D converter would convert that voltage into digital data which the computer can handle. Similarly, you may want to use the computer to control something (like a motor). In that case, you could use an A/D converter to create a "voltage" which controls the speed of the motor.
A/D converters need not go both ways. The most useful case is to convert analog data into digital data (which the computer can use), so you will probably run into more of those. A/D converters are also found in many places which aren't so obvious, including video cards and disk controllers.
Byron.
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