Motherboard and Bios

Generic Modern Motherboard

CPUSocket

Chipset

PCI-X

Courtesy of ASUS USA

SATA RAM Power

Battery

Things to know about the slots

PCI-X and AGP – (Advanced Graphics Port) - Special slots for graphics cards

PCI – (Peripheral Component Interconnect) – Most common on newer PCs. Used for Graphics, Network, Firewire, and any other add-on card for a newer PC. Roughly 10 times faster than ISA

ISA – (Industry Standard Architecture ) – Common on older PCs (Over 8 yrs old) – Slower Bus speed than PCI

Riding the Bus

Lines of communication within the PC Capability measured in speed and width Modern PCs usually have a bus speed of 133-

533 MHz – Older PCs have 66 or 133 MHz– Important when buying additional RAM, RAM must run

at the same speed as the Motherboard– Main Bus vs. Front side Bus

Bus width – amount of data that can be sent over the same wire at the same time

– Modern PCs – Maximum 64 Bits Bus Width

Internal and External Bus

Internal Bus – On the board itself (Processor, RAM)

External Bus – leads outside of the box (USB, Keyboard connections, PCI etc)

Can have different speeds

PC Card Speeds

AGP – usually 32 Bits PCI – 32 or 64 Bits ISA – 8 or 16 Bits

CMOS Battery

Lithium Battery that backs up the System BIOS Needs replacing every so often Signs it needs to be replaced

– Clock does not keep time between reboots– Computer “loses” hard drives, floppies, and other

devices that are installed on the computer– Other assorted weirdness

BIOS (Basic Input Output System)

A power-on self-test (POST) for all of the different hardware components in the system to make sure everything is working properly

Activating other BIOS chips on different cards installed in the computer - For example, SCSI and graphics cards often have their own BIOS chips.

Providing a set of low-level routines that the operating system uses to interface to different hardware devices - It is these routines that give the BIOS its name. They manage things like the keyboard, the screen, and the serial and parallel ports, especially when the computer is booting.

Managing a collection of settings for the hard disks, clock, etc.– Thanks Howstuffworks.com

BIOS Updates

Newer mobo's often have updates Adds functionality, fixes bugs, speeds things

up Methods:

– Making a boot floppy– Boot CD-ROM– Program that re-boots and updates

Cooling

Enemy #1: Heat Active cooling Passive cooling Moving parts wear out

Active Cooling

Fans Heat Exchanger Liquid

Passive Cooling

Heat Sinks Heat Exchanger