In computer (or computing) science, input/output (or I/O) can refer to a collection of interfaces that different functional units (sub-systems) of an information processing system use to communicate with each other. In general, Input can be a signal received by a functional unit, and output can be a signals sent from the functional unit.
Input/output (I/O) devices can be used by a person (or other system) to communicate with a computer. For instance, keyboards and mouses are considered input devices of a computer and monitors and printers are considered output devices of a computer. Typically, devices used for communication between computers are for both input and output (e.g., modems and network cards).
Some input devices (e.g., mouses and keyboards) can receive as input the physical movement provided by a human being and convert it into signals that a computer can understand. The output from these devices is treated as input by the computer. Similarly, printers and monitors take as input signals that a computer outputs and convert them into representations that human users can see or read (the process of reading or seeing the representations can be considered as receiving input.)
Generally, an input device can be considered an interface between a user (e.g., human being, application program) and a machine. The input device's primary function is to receive input from the user and translate it for the machine. A few examples of Input devices are keyboards, mouses, touchpads, touchscreens, trackballs and tablets. Input devices are prevalent in gaming environments. Joysticks, gamepads, power pads and analog sticks are examples of input devices that are often used in gaming environments.
Some devices can effectively provide both input and output. As an example, conventional touchscreens (touchscreens, touch panels or touchscreen panels) are display overlays which have the ability to display and receive information on the same screen. The effect of such overlays allows a display to be used as an input device, removing the keyboard and/or the mouse as the primary input device for interacting with the display's content. Such displays can be attached to computers or, as terminals, to networks. Touchscreens also have assisted in recent changes in the PDA and Cell-Phone Industries, making these devices more usable. Touchscreens have become commonplace since the invention of the electronic touch interface in 1971 by Dr. Samuel C. Hurst. They have become familiar in retail settings, on point of sale systems, on ATMs and on PDAs where a stylus is sometimes used to manipulate the GUI and to enter data. The popularity of smart phones, PDAs, portable game consoles and many types of information appliances is driving the demand for, and the acceptance of, touchscreens.
More recently, “multi-touching” techniques have been developed. Generally, “multi-touch” can refer to a human-computer interaction technique and the hardware devices that implement it. For example, it can refer to a touchscreen (or touch tablet/touchpad) that recognizes multiple simultaneous touch points. The multi-touch screen can be configured to detect the pressure or degree of each touch independently, as well as detecting their individual position. This allows gestures and interaction with multiple fingers or hands, chording, and can provide rich interaction, including direct manipulation, through intuitive gestures. Depending largely on their size, some multi-touch devices support more than one user on the same device simultaneously. One salient aspect of this technique is that it makes easy to zoom in or out in a Zooming User Interface with two fingers, for example, thereby providing a more direct mapping than with a single-point device like a mouse or stylus. Touchscreens (touchscreens, touch panels or touchscreen panels) are display overlays which have the ability to display and receive information on the same screen. The effect of such overlays allows a display to be used as an input device, removing the keyboard and/or the mouse as the primary input device for interacting with the display's content. Such displays can be attached to computers or, as terminals, to networks. Touchscreens also have assisted in recent changes in the PDA and Cell-Phone Industries, making these devices even more usable.
As noted above, input devices, among other places, are prevalent in gaming environments. As such, a modern gaming machine will be discussed. As such, a modern gaming machine is discussed further.
Typically, a gaming machine utilizes a master controller to effectively control various combinations of devices that allow a player to play a game on the gaming machine and also encourage game play on the gaming machine. A game played on a gaming machine usually requires a player to input money or indicia of credit into the gaming machine, indicate a wager amount, and initiate playing a game of chance. These steps require the gaming machine to control input devices, such as bill validators and coin acceptors, to accept money into the gaming machine and recognize user inputs from devices, including key pads, button pads, card readers, and ticket readers, to determine the wager amount, and initiate game play. After game play has been initiated, the gaming machine determines the outcome of the game, presents the game outcome to the player, and may dispense an award of some type depending on the outcome of the game. The operations described above may be carried out on the gaming machine when the gaming machine is operating as a “stand alone” unit and/or linked in a network of some type to a group of gaming machines.
As technology in the gaming industry progresses, more and more gaming services are being provided to gaming machines via communication networks that link groups of gaming machines to a remote computer, such as a host server, that provides one or more gaming services. As an example, gaming services that may be provided by a remote computer to a gaming machine via a communication network of some type include player tracking, accounting, cashless award ticketing, lottery, progressive games, and bonus games or prizes. These services and features are provided in addition to the games that are available for play on the gaming machines.