The component of hardware basically consists of all the physical parts of the computer workstation. It consists of the monitor, keyboard, RAM (Random Access Memory), ROM (Read Only Media), the mouse, and the CPU. The CPU consists of the motherboard, buses, the modem, the microchip(s), and the drives. There are many different types of drives: the Floppy disk drive (each disk holds 1.44 MB), the ZIP Drives (not found on all machines, but holds 100 MB per disk), the Super Floppy disk drive (rarely used now, could hold from 2.0 to 2.5 MB), the hard drive (the internal drive of any machine, anywhere from 2 to 100 GB), the CD-ROM drive (can only read CDs, and cannot change anything on the CD, usually 700 MB), CD-RW drive (can read, change/burn new information on blank CDs, 700 MB), and the DVD-ROM drive (usually 6 GB). You may be asking, what is the difference between RAM and ROM? RAM is faster, but also dependent on the power of the machine, whereas ROM is not dependent on the power of the machine.

Hardware is classified as either Input, Process, or Output hardware. The keyboard and the mouse are considered to be input hardware. The printer and the monitor are output hardware. And the microprocessor is obviously considered to be process hardware.