Itr3 lecture 3: the motherboard

Thomas Krichel

2002-10-01

Structure

• Like a jackson pollock painting.

Literature

• Norton “new inside the PC” chapter 5

Opening a PC

• Voltages used in the PC are 3 to 5 V

• Be aware of static electricity, touch first– Unpainted part of case– Power supply

• Keep power cable plugged in a grounded socket

• Never open sealed part of the power supply

Basic parts of a PC

• Display • Input

– Keyboard – Mouse etc

• System Unit– Logic system– Display system– Storage system– Input output system– Communication system

Logic system

• Motherboard green plastic sheet with traces and slots, usually complying to a standard called “plug and play”

• Jumpers can set key features• CMOS or flash memory

– Powered by battery – holds the Basic Input Output System

• Central Processing Unit socket• Main memory socket• Bus (set of all other slots)

Other components

• The display system– Video card

• Storage system– Hard disk– Floppy disk– CD-rom– CD-R– CD-RW

Other components

• Keyboard and mouse• Parallel port

– Parallel because it can move a whole byte at a time – Mainly used for connection to a printer– Nowadays it can handle bidirectional traffic, but not

practical for non-printer devices

• Serial port– One bit at a time -- Uses thin cable– Slow -- inexpensive

• Universal serial bus (USB) or IEEE 1394.

Other components

• Modems, allow communication over a phone line– Internal modems with own serial device– External modem– It squeaks

• Network interfaces

Organized working

• Track parts taken out

• Be careful to align ribbon cables properly– Check it is not put the other way round– Check that the alignment is correct

• Be careful with shorting jumpers– Do not short the wrong thing

Slots and sockets

• Integrated Drive Electronics– Dual in-line memory modules (DIMM)– Cable connectors

• Chipset sockets– Industry standard architecture, ISA, since

1984 AD, 16 bit at a time– Peripheral component interconnect, PCI, 32

bit at a time – Advanced graphics processor, AGP

http://openlib.org/home/krichel

Thank you for your attention!