PC motherboard - PC motherboard A motherboard is a printed circuit board used in a personal computer. It is also known as the mainboard and occasionally abbreviated to mobo. The term "mainboard" is also used for the main circuit board in other electronic devices. The remainder of this article discusses the so-called "IBM compatible PC" motherboard. ATX format motherboard, ABIT KT7. () Like any other computer system, all of the basic circuitry and components required for a PC to function sit either directly on the motherboard or on an expansion card slided in a slot of the motherboard. A PC motherboard allows the attachment of the CPU, graphics card, Sound card, IDE/ATA/Serial ATA Hard disk Controller, Memory (RAM), and almost all the other devices in the computer system. It.
Motherboard - Motherboard A motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up a computer system or other complex electronic system. A typical computer is built with the microprocessor, main memory, and other basic components on the motherboard. Other components of the computer such as external storage, control circuits for video display and sound, and peripheral devices are attached to the motherboard via connectors or cables of some sort. There is more discussion of motherboards in IBM compatible personal computers in PC motherboard. See also Front side bus, BIOS.
IBM POWER - descended directly from the earlier IBM 801 CPU, widely considered to be the first true RISC chip design. It was used in a number of applications inside IBM hardware, but did not become public until they released the poorly-performing IBM PC/RT in the mid-1980s. At about the same time the PC/RT was being released, IBM started the America Project, to design the most powerful CPU on the market. They were interesting primarily in fixing two problems in the 801 design in the resulting POWER design: the 801 required all instructions to complete in one clock cycle, which eliminated floating point instructions although the decoder was pipelined as a side effect of these single-cycle operations, they didn't use superscalar effects Floating point became a focus for the America Project, and IBM were.
IBM Portable - machine. It was released in February, 1984, and was eventually replaced by the IBM Convertible. The Portable was basically a PC/XT motherboard, transplanted into a Compaq-style luggable case. The system featured 256 kilobytes of memory (expandable to 640KB), an added CGA card and composite monitor, and 2 half-height 5.25" floppy disk drives. Unlike Compaq's design, which used a very sharp double-scanning monitor and special CGA-compatible display card, IBM used a stock CGA board and a composite monitor, which was not as sharp. References http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5155.html.
IMac - the first move in a general turnaround in public perception and financial success for Apple. It was the first of many future innovations introduced by the then interim CEO Steve Jobs. Despite Apple's small relative market-share, the iMac left a large imprint in the public consciousness, and inspired several imitators. The iMac was the first "New World" Macintosh. The Mac OS (toolbox) ROM was loaded into RAM from the hard drive unlike previous (Old World) ROM soldered onto the motherboard. The iMac was also the first Macintosh to feature USB ports, instead of the legacy Apple Desktop Bus and Geoport serial ports. Apple also took the bold move of omitting a floppy disk drive: while the floppy disk was already falling into disuse, PC manufacturers still included them as a legacy.
Intel - software was important in the development of software digital video, but later its efforts were largely overshadowed by competition from Microsoft. The competition between Intel and Microsoft was revealed in testimony at the Microsoft anti-trust trial. Intel's dominance in the x86 microprocessor market led to numerous charges of antitrust violations over the years, including FTC investigations in both the late 1980s and in 1999, and civil actions such as the 1997 suit by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and a patent suit by Intergraph. Intel's market dominance (at one time it controlled over 85% of the market for 32-bit PC microprocessors), combined with Intel's own hardball legal tactics (such as its infamous 338 patent suit versus PC manufacturers) made it an attractive target for litigation, but few of the lawsuits ever amounted.
Industry standard architecture - 1984 that extends the XT bus architecture to 16 bits. It is designed to connect peripheral cards to the motherboard. The protocols also allows for bus mastering although only the first 16 MB of main memory is available for direct access. In reference to the XT bus architecture it is sometimes referred to as the AT bus architecture. Upon the end of the 1990s, ISA's popularity started to wane, and most IBM PC motherboards began to be designed with several PCI slots but with few if any ISA slots. Although some motherboards with ISA slots are still being produced today, they've become quite rare in modern systems. System manufacturers often shield customers from the term 'ISA bus', referring to it instead as the legacy bus (see legacy system). See also: Extended.
VIA C3 - Cyrix, which VIA bought. The fastest edition currently available works at the speed of 1 GHz with a 133 MHz front side bus on a Socket 370 motherboard. While being much slower than x86 CPUs being sold by AMD and Intel, it has special niche qualities which make it attractive to some buyers: Relatively low electrical consumption levels, at only 11.25 watts maximum Its price is cheap It produces very little heat for a PC processor, and therefore can be run without a cooling fan if it is underclocked or if it has got a suitable heatsink It runs on older Socket 370 motherboards According to VIA, the VIA C3 is to be superseded in 2003 by the VIA C4 - a clone of the design of the Intel Pentium 4.
Front side bus - changing jumpers. Although many CPU manufacturers now usually "lock" an unchangable preset multiplier setting into the chip, meaning manually-set multiplier settings are ignored in favour of the preset multiplier. It is possible to unlock some locked CPUs (namely those from AMD) through a complicated process of connecting electrical currents across points on the CPU's surface. For some processors, the FSB speed can be increased to boost processing speed (called overclocking). This overclocking can take different forms; such as overclocking the front side bus higher than the motherboard was designed to go, or overclocking the front side bus for the purposes of overclocking a (usually, locked) CPU. The PCI and AGP buses, which usually run much slower than the frontside bus, use dividers to reduce the clock speed. Typically the PCI bus.
Expansion card - printed circuit board that can be inserted into the expansion slot of a computer motherboard to add additional functionality. One edge of the expansion card holds the contacts that fit exactly into the slot. The establish the electrical contact between the electronics (mostly integrated circuits) on the card and on the motherboard. The earliest type of PC expansion card was built to the industry-standard architecture (ISA) specification and had a metal bracket at one end. This bracket was fastened to the PC case with a screw. Connectors mounted on the bracket allowed the connection external devices to the card. ISA cards are now obsolete and have been replaced by PCI cards. A PC graphics card (video card, VGA card) is a type of expansion card. It usually sits in an AGP.
Desknote - power-reduced notebook versions. Prices may be lower than notebook computers in the market at the same time. Negatives include the limited expansion options, comparable to a desktop replacement notebook, and usually the requirement to use costly and size-restricted laptop hard drives instead of desktop price, performance and capacity 3.5" hard drives. They usually lack the ability to accept standard PCI expansion cards, something which can be a problem for people who want to use their desktop computer as a digital personal video recorder. Video options are usually limited to notebook computer designs of limited performance, though comparable to motherboard-integrated desktop computer offerings. Upgrades are usually very limited compared to desktop computers, not including complete motherboard and CPU replacement to switch to the latest generation and preserve the investment in the chassis.
A4000 - the CPU mounted in a daughterboard using a special CPU slot. The mainboard had no CPU at all. Later machines had the CPU surface mounted on the mainboard in an effort to reduce costs. The tower version was the only Amiga ever to have both SCSI and IDE interfaces built-in on the motherboard. Having driver software for both interfaces on the ROM meant that some other parts of AmigaOS had to be moved from the ROM, and thus the A4000T is the only machine to have the file "workbench.library" stored on disk. It was also the only Amiga to use a PC form factor for the motherboard, and the first (and only) to use a Lithium Ion backup battery instead of a NiCd. This was the final "big-box" machine to be.
Accelerated Graphics Port - computer bus standard for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard, dedicated primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. AGP dynamically allocates the PC's normal RAM to store the screen image and to support texture mapping, z-buffering and alpha blending. AGP originated from Intel, and that company originally built AGP into a chipset for its Pentium II microprocessor. AGP cards generally slightly exceed PCI cards in length. The first version of AGP, now called AGP 1x, uses a 32-bit bus operating at 66 MHz. This results in a maximum data rate for an AGP 1x slot of 266 megabytes per second. In comparison, a standard 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus (which can be composed of one or more slots) maxes out at 133 MB/s. As of 2003, newer.
AMD 5x86 - rather than the more common 8k. A rare 150 MHz-rated part may've also been released by AMD. Since having a clock multiplier of four was not part of the original Socket 3 design, AMD made the 5x86 look for a two times setting from the motherboard and interpret that as four times instead. In other words, to use the 5x86 you want to set the motherboard to the 2x setting. This will actually cause the 5x86 to run at 4x. The chip will actually physically fit into an older 486 socket such as a socket 1 or 2 or the original 168-pin 486 socket, but doing this requires a voltage regulator since the AMD chip runs at 3.3 volts. The combination of best-in-class clock speed and the write-back cache allowed the.
Chipset - of coprocessors made those computer much more powerful than one could suspect. (see also Original chipset) On early IBM PCs, there were no chipset of that type. But as years passed, more and more dedicated boards handled the tasks of video, sound and other peripherals, and a multi-coprocessor configuration is standard among contemporary (2003) PCs. The term chipset is now (2003) commonly used for a PC's motherboard configuration: the usual standard is to use two microchips, the northbridge (used to "bridge" between the processor and main memory) and the southbridge (used to communicate with all the other peripherals). Different chipset technologies can have major impacts on a computer performance, especially on multiprocessor systems..
Computer hardware - blurry - firmware is software that is "built-in" to the hardware, but such firmware is usually the province of computer programmers and computer engineers in any case and not an issue that computer users need to concern themselves with. A typical computer (Personal Computer, PC) contains in a desktop or tower case the following parts: Motherboard which holds the CPU, main memory and other parts, and has slots for expansion cards power supply - a case that holds a transformer, voltage control and fan storage controllers, of IDE, SCSI or other type, that control hard disk , floppy disk, CD-ROM and other drives; the controllers sit directly on the motherboard (on-board) or on expansion cards graphics controller that produces the output for the monitor the hard disk, floppy disk and other.
TRS-80 Color Computer - operating systems were available for the Coco line. These included FLEX (from Frank Hogg) and Microware's OS-9 operating system. Both systems turned the Coco into a much more powerful system, and in the case of OS-9, made it multi-user/multi-tasking. Tandy also released a Multi-Pak which allowed up to 4 cartridges to be mounted at the same time, a Voice Synthesiser, 300 Baud Modem Pak, and other accessories. The Coco was the first Tandy computer to have a mouse available for it. A popular third party accessory was CocoMax which added a high-resolution Joystick adapter cartridge for the Tandy Mouse, and a software package which was a clone of MacPaint. This was very desirable product for Coco owners and, interestingly enough, the prototypes of the Macintosh Computer were built using the same.
SCSI host adapter - SCSI host adapters are 32-bit or 64-bit PCI cards. Older ones were based on the 16-bit ISA bus or the transitional 32-bit VESA and EISA buses. It is not uncommon for a SCSI host adapter to be built into a PC motherboard as an integral part, however this typically makes the board quite expensive and it is more usual to retain the SCSI host adapter as a separate component which can be easily replaced or transferred to another machine. SCSI host adapters traditionally fall into two broad classes: Simple, relatively low-performance cards that provide an inexpensive way to connect SCSI devices that do not demand a great deal of bandwidth: notably CD-ROM drives and SCSI scanners. The cost varies but is typically in the order of $US40 or so. These were.
Sound card - and store it (controlled by the corresponding computer software) on the computer's hard disk. The third external connector a typical sound card has, is used to connect a microphone directly. Its sound can be recorded to hard disk or otherwise processed (for example, by speech recognition software or for Voice over IP). One of the first manufacturers of sound cards for the IBM PC was AdLib. This set the de facto-standard until Creative Labs produced the Sound Blaster card. Early soundcards could not record and play simultaneously. Most soundcards are now full-duplex. In the late 1990s, many computer manufacturers began to replace plug-in soundcards with a codec integrated into the motherboard. Many of these used Intel's AC97 specification. Driver architecture To use a sound card, a certain operating system typically requires.
Packard Bell - Alagem and a group of investors bought the Packard Bell name from Teledyne and resurrected it as a manufacturer of low-cost personal computers. The computers, among the first IBM PC compatibles sold in retail consumer electronics chains, became popular. However, they also gained a reputation for poor quality, a reputation that worsened in 1995 when it was accused of recycling used parts in PCs that it sold as new. Worsening the situation, Packard Bell frequently used motherboards and power supplies in odd form factors that made replacement parts difficult or impossible to come by, and frequently integrated most components, including even modems, into the motherboard, making upgrades or repairs difficult. Although the new Packard Bell was connected to the old company by name only, it utilized the slogan, "America grew up.
