Ms technology vocabulary mother board

Connor Landrum

January 2009

Computer 7-3

The Mother Board

A mother board is the central printed circuit board in a computer and it ties about everything in your computer together.

The mother board holds most of the important parts of the computer, such as sockets where microprocessor(s) are installed, slots where most of the systems main memory is installed, and slots for expansion cards, and ties them together. Other parts, such as fans, PS/2 connectors for the mouse, and disk controllers may be added as well to increase the efficiency, working capability, or/and life span of the mother board. The mother board comes with an important part called a chipset, which determines the ability and working capability of the mother board.

Mother boards are generally air cooled with heat sinks and will crash from over heating if it is not cooled enough. Because of the more powerful versions of mother boards being made and giving off more heat mixed with the crashing fact, many mother boards have a CPU fan on their heat sinks that are used to make the cooling greater so that the mother board does not crash. Since technology is always changing, new and more CPU fans are always being added to stop the mother board from over heating and crashing.

History

Before microprocessors were invented, computers were usually built with a backplane with sockets in which components would be housed. Unlike the mother board, which ties everything together, the backplane had individual slots for all of the components.

1980s/1990s the motherboard was necessary for more modules and was given a component allowing it to take on low speed modules, such as a mouse, keyboard, floppy disk drive, and serial ports. Late 1990s most mother boards had audio, video, and storage without need for expansion cards.

http://wiki.sjs.org/wiki/index.php/MS_Technology_Vocabulary

edited by Ben Wolf