Far Out » Hardware

Computer System Motherboard

Ryder — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:50:06 +0000

The motherboard is the main circuit board inside your computer. It is the largest and most complicated piece of equipment within a computer case. It houses the central processing unit (CPU) the BIOS, the chipset, the system bus and main memory (RAM and ROM) Located on the motherboard are also expansion slots for adding devices and power connections. All of the peripheral devices on a computer are installed directly on the motherboard or are linked to it by a cable connection. The main purpose of the motherboard is to coordinate all the individual processes of each component so they all work properly together. The main system board is what processes input from a computer user and produces output which is seen on the computer screen.

Video Graphics Card

Ryder — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:10:15 +0000

The video graphics controller card provides an interface between the monitor and the computer. Usually a computer comes with a graphics card that is integrated into the motherboard and many of the older cards had no on board memory and therefore relied on the computer processor to manage all video graphics. With an ever-increasing demand to run high-intensity graphic enriched software, video cards have advanced to meet the needs! Modern graphics cards now have their own on board (CPU) processor called a graphics accelerator and newer cards also have their own on board memory chips to store information. This speeds up the retrieve time for frames and backgrounds. Because, the video card has its own RAM and does not have to get images from the hard drive or system RAM.

Modern day video graphics cards

The modern video cards provide enhanced support for 3-D graphic acceleration, color space conversion, dual porting, MGEG decoding, EPA Green PC Support, interpolated scaling, digital output for flat panel monitors and application support for powerful graphics software like InDesign, Quark and Auto-CAD.

Basic Input/Output System (BIOS)

Ryder — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 23:15:44 +0000

The system BIOS is actually a combination of software and hardware and is sometimes referred to as firmware. The data in the BIOS is held in ROM (read-only memory) The main functions of the BIOS is to hold the instructions that start up the computer and to manage the system devices from CMOS setup, such as power saving features, plug and play settings, keeping track of the current time and identifying which hardware devices are present. Sometimes when a computer component is added or updated on a system or when a newer device driver is preferred, it becomes necessary to upgrade the ROM BIOS. In years past, this process involved buying the new ROM chip and exchanging it on the motherboard. Now with modern technology, ROM chips on the motherboard are made to be re-programmable and the data on the chip can be overwritten by a process called Flash ROM without removing it.