Neon-komputadór

Motherboard

The motherboard is the most essential component of the system unit's computing abilities. Coming in several designs and shapes, the most flexible and popular design is the ATX which can happily slot into desktop, full tower and mini-tower cases with excellent design for cooling, and input/output connections. Two other major designs, NLX and WTX are worth briefly noting. The NLX design has integrated Ethernet (see next chapter) and known as being the easiest to service, making it very popular among technicians! WTX is a fairly new design (first released 1998) and is orientated towards mid-range workstations. The tower chassis is rank mountable and designed for future technologies including double-wide PCI cards.

The basic components of a motherboard are as follows: the ROM BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), the processor or CPU, Floppy Disk and IDE or SCSI connectors (Hard Disk Drivers/CD Drives), slots for memory chips, slots for extra cards (e.g., video cards, internal modems, adapter cards), input/Output connectors for keyboard, mouse, monitor, printers, scanners, speakers etc. IDE or SCSI Data cables connect the motherboard to the disk drives. The entire board is etched, in a manner that many find aesthetically quite beautiful, for the transfer of electricity and data.

Understanding what happens on the motherboard really gives one a great overview about how the entire computer works. From turning on the power the supply provides electricity to the motherboard. The BIOS is loaded into the CPU which then searches for a disk operating system (usually on the hard disk drive). If that loads correctly, the user can issue instructions through input devices connected to the motherboard and with results sent via the motherboard to output devices.

The picture below is illustrative.

The proprietary motherboard style on our older Compaq machines is more than annoying. Whilst most proprietary styles allow for simple upgrades, there are dangers in compatibility issues and some manufacturers seem to make it impossible for one to have replacement parts except from the original system manufacturer. Upgrading the machine by replacing the motherboard is next to impossible and is a source of frustration among technicians who hate throwing away a perfectly good case and chassis.