What is a motherboard

What is a Motherboard?

The full definition of motherboard.

If you ever open up your computer casing and have a look inside you will see a lot of components, there will be many wires and leads from every direction all meeting in one place. This is the motherboard and is the largest circuit board inside your computer.

The motherboard, also known as the mainboard or logic board, is a printed circuit board (PCB) and is responsible for housing all the important components of your computer system.

The motherboard gets it name from the fact that it is a printed circuit board (PCB) and is able to have many other devices added to it. These added devices are called daughter boards or expansion boards and increase the computers performance and capabilities

All the devices that make up your home computer are attached to the motherboard through expansion slots and sockets.

The motherboard of your computer is essentially where all the real work is done. It houses all the microchips, known as the Chip Set, and also the CPU.

These do all the processing of data and the controlling of other devices. All the other hardware components are added and attached to the motherboard to make the complete computer system you have at home.

At the very heart of the motherboard is the brain behind the whole operation, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) this is the brainpower that does all the processing while making millions of calculations per second.

The motherboard is the foundation that your computer is built upon.

How does a motherboard work?

The motherboard is the manager of the computer system, everything your computer does or is instructed to do goes through the motherboard.

You can imagine your motherboard looking like a map and working like an electrical highway. The printed circuit board is a maze of built in circuitry that is running between all the devices housed on your motherboard, it supplies electricity and sends data between the different devices.

The communication paths where data travels between the different devices and the CPU are known as buses. You could say that data catches the bus between devices on your motherboard via the highway of circuitry.

Rear panel on of a motherboard with many integrated inputs and outputs (I/O's).

PS2 Mouse Used to connect a PS/2 pointing device.

PS2 Keyboard Used to connect a PS/2 keyboard.

Parallel Port (LPT1) Used to connect printers or other parallel communications devices.

Serial Port Used to connect serial devices such as mice or (COM1) fax/modems.

VGA Port Connect your monitor to the VGA port.

1394a Port Use the 1394a port to connect to any firewire device.

LAN Port Used to connect an RJ-45 cable to a Network hub or router.

USB Ports Used to connect USB devices such as printers, scanners cameras et...

Audio Ports Used to connect audio devices.

The D port is for stereo line-in signal, while the F port is for microphone in signal. This motherboard supports 8-channel audio devices that correspond to the A, B, C, and E port respectively. In addition, all of the 3 ports, B, C, and E provide users with both right & left channels individually.

1. A. Center & Woofer

2. B. Back Surround

3. C. Side Surround

4. D. Line-in

5. E. Front Out

6. F. Mic_in Rear

What is a motherboard chipset?

What is a motherboard chipset and what does it do?

Housed on your motherboard are two major microchips known as the chipset. The chipset receives information from the CPU and directs that data flow down the correct 'bus route' to the hardware device that is needed.

You could consider these the traffic cops, standing at a large intersection telling the data traffic which way to go, on the electrical highway that is your mother board.

The chipset is made up of two chips known as "Northbridge" and "Southbridge" Both is responsible for directing all the information to their half of the computer.

Northbridge is responsible for directing the flow of data to the ram memory, video card and monitor.

Southbridge is responsible for directing the flow of data to computer peripherals, hard drive, real time clock, power management, USB, keyboard and mouse.

What is a motherboard battery?

What is a motherboard battery used for and what does it do?

Have you ever wondered how your computer knows what the time is even though you switch it off and sometimes unplug it?

Unlike a lot of other electrical devices with clocks when the power goes off you don't lose your clock settings and have to reset them. This is the purpose of a motherboard battery.

The motherboard battery is also responsible for keeping a small amount of information stored on a Complementary metal oxide semiconductor or CMOS chip for short. The CMOS chip holds the instructions for starting your computer when you turn the power on.

If your motherboard battery has died you will most likely get error messages on start-up and your computer will not start up as expected.

If you notice your computers clock is losing time or being a ‘little erratic this means it is time to replace the motherboard battery.

What is a motherboard expansion slot?

What is a motherboard expansion slot used for?

The expansion slots on your motherboard are there so you can add devices to your computer system. Your computer is built in a modular way allowing you to add new things or upgrade old parts inside. There are 100s of devices that can be added to a computer system.

Expansion cards also known as daughter boards are printed circuit boards. Common expansion cards that are already inside your computer include the video card, sound card, and network card, but what if you want to watch television through your home computer? Easy, install a TV tuner card into one of the expansion slots on your motherboard!

What is a Motherboard? The motherboard is the management centre of your computer.

in the next few articles you will find out what each item does