Computer Hardware & Software Lab Manual 2
- 1. 1 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Lab Two Motherboard Objectives Understand functionality and Architecture of Motherboard Identify components onMotherboard Practice Connecting components on Motherboard Safety Use anti-static electric discharge pad or wear shoes before touching motherboard Do not touch pins inside Processor Socket
- 2. 2 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Motherboard Motherboard is the Printed circuit board and it is the main component of the system, every component internal or external connects directly or indirectly to motherboard. It is also known as mainboard or printed circuit board, system board. It is made of fiberglass brown or green typically with a meshwork of copper lines these lines are electronic circuits through which power, data, and control signals travel. Group of these lines assigned a set of functions, is collectively called a “bus”. There are ways in which components are connected to the motherboard. 1. Integrated in to the circuit board of the motherboard (in build video, audio, NIC controllers) 2. Attached through connectors, sockets, slots on board (processor, RAM, HDD, CD/DVD) 3 Attached through external back panel or front panel (Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, USB drive) Form Factors of Motherboard The form factor refers to the physical dimensions (size and shape) as well as certain connector, screw hole, and other positions that dictate into which type of case the board will fit.
- 3. 3 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Main Components of Motherboard Processor Socket Memory Slots Chipset Bus Architecture Firmware BIOS CMOS Motherboard Connectors Adapter cards Slots Processor Socket Processor is mounted on the motherboard in a socket. Types of Socket Pin Grid Array (PGA) Land Grid Array (LGA) (socket T) Ball Grid Array (BGA) Flip Chip PGA Figure 4: Processor Sockets
- 4. 4 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Primary Memory Slots 172-pin MicroDIMM, used for DDR SDRAM 184-pin DIMM, used for DDR SDRAM 200-pin SO-DIMM, used for DDR SDRAM and DDR2 SDRAM 204-pin SO-DIMM, used for DDR3 SDRAM 214-pin MicroDIMM, used for DDR2 SDRAM 240-pin DIMM, used for DDR2 SDRAM, DDR3 SDRAM and FB-DIMM DRAM Figure 5: Memory Slot Chipset Chipset refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. A chipset controls the system bus structures and facilitates the movement of data and instructions between the Processor, cache memory and internal and external peripheral devices. Two main chips in chipset are Memory Control Hub (Northbridge) and Input Output Control Hub (Southbridge). The Northbridge links the CPU to very high-speed devices, especially main memory and graphics controllers, and the Southbridge connects to lower-speed peripheral buses (such as PCI ). In many modern chipsets, the Southbridge actually contains some on-chip integrated peripherals, such as Ethernet, USB, and audio devices. Chipset controls the flow of bits that travel between the CPU, system memory, and the motherboard bus. Efficient data transfers, fast expansion bus support, and advanced power management and many more are the features of chipset. A chipset is usually designed to work with a specific family of microprocessors. Because it controls communications between the processor and external devices, the chipset plays a crucial role in determining system performance.
- 5. 5 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Every chipset has a specific model number and its two main chips North Bridge and South Bridge model numbers. We can identify them in following ways 1. Using Chipset Identification Utility: download a tool from Intel or third party website and install the tool to identify the chipset model. 2. Through Device manager: click Start » click Control Panel » double-click the System icon » click the Hardware tab » click Device Manager Click the sign to expand the System devices entry. Look for the chipset name in a string similar to the following: "Intel® 955X Memory Controller Hub - 2774". In this example, the chipset is an Intel® 955X Express Chipset. 3. Product Documentation 4. Chipset Marking: Open the System case and on the motherboard find the chipset marking or chipset model number. Figure 6: Chipset Model
- 6. 6 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Figure 7: Chipset Block Diagram Bus Architecture It refers to pathways that power, data, and control signals use to travel from one component to another in the computer. There are different types of buses. Processor Bus: data and control signals to and from processor travel through this bus it is also known as Front Side Bus Memory Bus: data and control signals to and from primary memory (RAM) travel through this bus. Input Output Bus: data and control signals to and from input and output devices travel through this bus.
- 7. 7 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer The system crystal determines the speed at which a CPU and the rest of the PC operate. This is called the system bus speed. The system crystal is usually a quartz oscillator, very similar to the one in a wristwatch, soldered to the motherboard (Figure 8). The quartz oscillator sends out an electric pulse at a certain speed, many millions of times per second. This signal goes first to a clock chip that adjusts the pulse, usually increasing the pulse sent by the crystal by some large multiple. As long as the PC is turned on, the quartz oscillator, through the clock chip, fires a charge on the CLK wire, in essence pushing the system along. Before you install a CPU into a System, you must make sure that the crystal and clock chip send out the correct clock pulse for that particular CPU. Figure 8: Quartz Oscillator Firmware Firmware refers to software instructions, usually stored on ROM chips. Firmware exits on most PC components, such as video adapter, hard drives, network adapter and printers. These instructions are always available, so they are not reprogrammed every time the computer is started. BIOS BIOS is a term that stands for basic input/output system, which consists of low-level
- 8. 8 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer software that controls the system hardware and acts as an interface between the operating system and the hardware. It is responsible for informing the processor of the devices present and how to communicate with them. Whenever the processor makes a request of a component, the BIOS steps in and translates the request into instructions that the component can understand. Older Computers contained a true Read-Only BIOS that cannot be altered. Now the flash BIOS can be electronically upgrade so that it can recognize new device type. Given below is the illustration of system as layers where BIOS is in between hardware and Operating System. Application Programs Operating System ROM BIOS and Device Drivers HARDWARE Figure 9: PC System Layers CMOS Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor is another type of firmware, which stores settings such as date and time, keyboard settings, boot sequence. Interrupt Request line and I/O resources that BIOS uses. It is also referred as RTC/NVRAM (Real Time Clock Non Volatile RAM), this chip is volatile but it is supplied with power from Lithium Battery as show in the given below figure 10. You can enter and edit the settings by entering the computer’s Setup Program during boot up process. This is also referred as BIOS Setup. Note: BIOS and CMOS not to be confused they are two separate components. Figure 10: CMOS Battery
- 9. 9 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Mother Board Connectors All of the components of a computer directly or indirectly connect to motherboard and some are in-built. In many ways connection is established they are as follows. On Board Connection: here component is fixed on to board using Slots and Sockets on mother board. Example Processor, RAM, Network card, AGP card etc Internal Connection: Components inside the System case connects to mother board using connectors. Example Hard Disk Drive, CD/DVD Drive, etc External Connection: Components external to the system case are connected through back-panel. SLOTS: slot is an narrow opening through which an object can pass. Here on motherboard a slot is used to fix a adapter card in to it. There are different types of slot available but most common which are seen on most of the motherboards are given below. PCI Slots (Peripheral Component Interconnect): PCI is bus to connect the expansion cards like network card, modem card, video card etc. There are many variants of PCI bus as follows Figure 11 PCI Slot PCI Slot is the most common slot found on almost all of the mother boards. PCI Express (PCIe): this slot is as PCI but with numerous improvements such as maximum system bus throughput, high speed, and low pin count.
- 10. 10 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Figure 12: PCI E Slots AGP Slot (Accelerated Graphics Port) is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. It is more a high performance point-to-point connection used only by video cards. But now AGP Cards are connected in to PCIe Slots. On the chart below we compared the transfer rates of the PCI, AGP and PCI Express busses. The PCI Express bus is hot plug, i.e., it’s possible to install and remove PCI Express boards even when the PC is on. PCI Express slot is connected to the motherboard chipset using a dedicated lane, not sharing this lane (data path) with other PCI Express slots.
- 11. 11 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer The PCI Express x16 slot was developed to be used by video cards. PCI Express has replaced AGP as the default interface for graphics cards on new systems. With a few exceptions, all graphics cards being released as of 2009 from ATI and NVIDIA use PCI Express. NVIDIA uses the high bandwidth data transfer of PCIe for its Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology, which allows multiple graphics cards of the same chipset and model number to be run in tandem, allowing increased performance. Figure13: cards for different slots. AMR, CNR, ACR Slots: AMR (Audio Modem Riser), CNR (Communications and Network Riser) and ACR (Advanced Communications Riser) are slots that you can find on your motherboard that have the same goal: to install HSP (Host Signal Processing) devices to your PC. These devices can be modems, sound cards and network cards. Figure 14: AMR,CNR,ACR Slots.
- 12. 12 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Memory Slots: Memory slots like SIMM and DIMM will be discussed in memory chapter. Sockets: Sockets will be disused in detail in Processor chapter. Power Connectors: Power Supply (SMPS) supplies power to mother board. Different Form factors of power supply are available for desktop computers, such as ATX, BTX, LPX, microATX , Flex ITX. ATX (Advanced Technology Extension) is widely used. The ATX specification requires the power supply to produce three main outputs, +3.3 V, +5 V and +12 V. Figure 15: Power Connectors.
- 13. 13 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Parallel ATA Connector (PATA): It is 40 Pin connector. A ribbon cable connects the Hard disk drive and CD/DVD Drive to the interface, as shown in the figure below. Figure 16: PATA Connectors. Serial ATA (SATA): SATA is the High Speed Interface with seven conductors, SATA ribbon cable can be of 1 meter, it enables Hot-plugging. Figure below show cable and connector on motherboard. Figure 17: SATA Connector
- 14. 14 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Back Panel Connectors ATX boards have a unique double-high connector area for all the built-in connectors on the motherboard. When the computer is mounted, those motherboard parts show up at the computer case back panel. They are used to plug the mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, sound and any other peripherals you may have.
- 15. 15 | SENAY APPS 09190400866 SENAY APPS Computer Application And Android Developer Install the mother board 1. There are a lot of screw holes on the system case. Because it corresponds to various mother boards. 2. The mother board is fixed to the system case with a screw and a spacer.