Motherboard Ports
Ports
A port serves as interface between the computer and other computers or peripheral devices. The ports vary depending on the kind of equipment that will be connected to the port such as to connect a monitor, keyboard, mouse, game controllers, printers, webcam, speakers the ports sizes are different, as shown in the following image:
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| Ports in Motherboards |
The usage of ports is as follows:
- Serial Port: This port is used with a 9-pin connector. It is no longer in use, because these are replaced by interfaces such as Ethernet, FireWire and USB.
- PS/2 Port: This port was earlier used to connect keyboards and mouse. These were round ports for six pin connectors. They have now been replaced with Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports.
- Parallel Port: A common parallel port is used for 25 pins connector. These ports are similar to serial ports and were used to connect printers and joysticks. They are no longer in use and have also been replaced by USB ports.
- Video Graphics Array (VGA) Port: A VGA port is used to connect video display devices such as monitors and projectors to a computer. It has three rows for a 15 pin connector.
- USB Port: The USB port in nowadays the most popular type of port on a computer which is used to connect mouse, keyboard, printer, and external storage devices such a s DVD-RW drive and flash drive to a computer.
- TRS: Tip, ring and sleeve (TRS) ports, or mini-jacks or audio jacks, are commonly used to connect audio devices such as headphones and microphones to computers.
- Ethernet: This port is used for network connectors. They use fast transmission and category 6 (CAT6) network cable for network connections.
- HDMI: A HDMI(High Definition Multimedia Interface) port is that port where a device can be connected such as a DVD or a Blue ray player, a stereo speaker or a flat screen TV. HDMI enables excellent image and sound reproduction over the connected hardware.
- RJ-11 Connector: Registered Jack-11 is a telephone interface that uses a cable of twisted pairs of wire and a modular jack with two, four or six contacts. RJ-11 is the common connector for plugging a telephone into a wall and a handset into a telephone.
- RJ-45 Connector: Registered Jack-45 is a Ethernet Connector, wider than RJ-11 Connector. It have 8-pins because RJ-45 Cable contains 8 wires of different colours.
- The big connector which supplies the motherboard with power from the power supply.
- Other connector for the diskette drive, hard disk, CD-Rom drive and so on.
- Jumpers, which are used on some motherboards to configure voltage, various operating speeds and so on.
- A number of pins used to connect the reset button, LED for hard disk activity, built-in speaker and so on.
Front Panel Connectors
Motherboards commonly have connectors that are used to run wires to the front panel. There are several front panel connectors on the motherboard wires are plugged into these connectors with the other ends going to the appropriate connection on the front panel. For example, power drive, power button, reset button and so on.
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| Front Panel Ports |
Jumpers
Motherboards have a variety of different pins that can be connected with jumpers for different purposes. The most common reason to access a jumper is to reset the BIOS password. It is possible for user to set the password for the BIOS so that only that user can access the BIOS settings. If the user forgets the password, It can be cleared with a jumper to manage the BIOS.
System Resources
System resources are not actual physical devices; they cannot be touched by reaching into the machine. But, they are very important for two reasons. First, they dictate how the PC organizes its access to various memory areas and devices. Second, they are one of the most common areas where people have problems with the setup of their PCs: also called resource conflicts. The following are the four types of resources that the various parts of a computer can sometimes decide to fight over:
Interrupts (IRQs): As described in the example in the chapter on how the PC works, a device requests time from the processor using these interrupt requests. Under traditional designs, each device has a different IRQ number. If two try to use the same one, a conflict can result. Newer technologies can allow multiple devices to share an IRQ channel.
Direct Memory Access (DMA) Channels: Some devices have the ability to read and write directly from the system memory, instead of asking the processor to do it for them. Cutting the “middle man” out in this manner improves the efficiency of the system. Each device that does this, needs its own DMA channel.
Input/Output(I/O) Addresses: Devices exchange information with the system by putting data into certain specific memory addresses. For example, when the letter “M” was pressed in the example mentioned above, the keypress was stored in a certain memory address until was time for the processor to deal with it. Any time some information goes into or out of the machine, to the modem or the hard drive or the printer, for example, it uses these I/O address. Again, each device needs its own memory area.
Memory Addresses: Similar to I/O addresses, many devices use blocks of memory as part of their normal functioning. For example, they may map hardware programs (BIOS code) into memory, or use a memory area to hold temporary data they are using.
Jumpers: Motherboards have a variety of different pins that can be connected with jumpers for different purposes. The variety of different pin that can be connected with jumpers for different purposes. The most common reason to access a jumper is to reset the BIOS password. It is possible for a user to set the password for the BIOS so that only that user can access the BIOS settings. If the user forgets the password, it can be cleared with a jumper so that the BIOS can be managed.
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