COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SERVICIING

ASSIGNMENT I

Q1.Architecture and Block diagram of motherboard

Motherboard includes peripherals, interface cards, and daughter cards: sound cards, video
cards, network cards, hard drives, or other forms of persistent storage; TV tuner cards, cards
providing extra USB or FireWire slots and a variety of other custom components. It has no
additional expansions or capability, such as controlling boards in laser printers, televisions,
washing machines and other embedded systems with limited expansion abilities.

Processor Socket

The processor socket is the central piece of a motherboard that holds the processor (brain
of the computer) and it is located near the center of the motherboard

Power Connectors

The power connector, commonly a 20 or 24-pin connector, can be situated either near the
right edge of the motherboard, or somewhere close to the processor socket on older
motherboards. Newer motherboards have an additional 4-pin or 8-pin connector near the
processor for additional power

Memory Slots

Located in the upper-right part of the motherboard, the memory slots are used to hold the
memory modules. The low-end motherboards have two memory slots. High end memory and
gaming slots have 8 memory slots. It is important to pay attention on types of memory a
motherboard supports. Newer motherboards support DDR3 memory. The older motherboard
model supports different types of memory with two DDR1 memory slots and 2 DDR2 memory
slots, or two DDR2 slots and two DDR3 slots. The number of memory slots determines the
maximum amount of memory.

Video Card Slot

It is available as PCI-Express slot on newer motherboards or AGP on older ones, the

video card slot is situated right below the processor. High-end gaming motherboards come with
multiple video card slots, allowing the installation of multiple video cards in a SLI or Crossfire
configuration.

Expansion Slots

Expansion slots allow installing additional components and to enhance or expand the
functionality of the PC. For example TV tuner, a video capture card, a better soundcard, etc may
be installed. These ports are located under the video card slot, and come in the form of PCI slots
(on older motherboards) or a scaled-down version of PCI-Express slots (on newer
motherboards). Some motherboards come with both types of expansion slots. The number of
slots is usually dependent on the format of the motherboard – larger motherboards (full ATX)
have more, while smaller formats (micro-ATX) have fewer, if any.

IDE and SATA Ports

IDE and SATA ports are used to provide connectivity for the storage devices and optical
drives. The current version of SATA interface achieves maximum speeds of up to 600 MB/s, as
opposed to the IDE interface, which can reach a maximum of 133 MB/s.
BIOS Chip and Battery

The BIOS chip contains the basic code that boots the computer up to the point where the
operating system takes over. Since the BIOS code is stored on a memory chip that needs constant
power to function, a battery is also present to keep the chip powered when the computer is
unplugged.

Northbridge and Southbridge

A square metal component located somewhere in the lower-right part of the board. This
metal component is actually a heat sink, and its role is to provide thermal protection for the
Northbridge – one of the most important components of a motherboard. The northbridge is
responsible for coordinating the data flow between the memory, the video card and the
processor. A secondary chip, known as Southbridge, has a similar function, coordinating the data
flow between the processor and peripherals such as sound cards or network cards

Front Panel Connectors, USB Headers and Audio Header

The front panel connector is where all the elements present on the front of the case.
Power button, reset button, power LED, audio connectors and USB connectors are all connected
to the front panel or the corresponding headers.

Rear Connectors

These connectors are the bridge between the outside of the computer and the inside. The
connectors are actually located on the left edge of the motherboard; however, since these
connectors are accessible from the outside, the name simply implies where they are accessible
from – the rear of the PC case. External peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers
and so on are all connected via these connectors.
Q2. Bus Standards

A bus is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or
between computers. Buses are parallel electrical wires with multiple connections. Modern
computer buses use both parallel and bit serial connections

PCI

The PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect. It is high performance Bus that is used to
integrate chips, processor, memory subsystems and expansion boards. This bus was designed by
Intel in 1992 for integrating chips on a board. Initially it supported 32 bit but now it also supports
64 bit transmission.

The features of PCI bus are:

i. Synchronous Bus Architecture: PCI is a synchronous Bus. Data transfers in PCI bus
takes place according to a system clock. The maximum clock frequency is 66 MHz.
ii. 64 Bit Addressing: PCI bus supports 64 bit addressing. With PCI Bus, 64 Bit addressing
can be implemented with the same 32 Bit connector.
iii. Linear Burst Mode Data Transfer: PCI supports the feature of 'Burst Data Transfer'. With
Burst Data Transfer, the data can be transferred at very high speeds. Data transfer speeds
is 266 MB/sec for 32 bit data.
iv. Large Bandwidth: It can handle both 32 bit as well as 64 bit data. For 32 bit data, the
maximum bandwidth will be 132 MB/sec which becomes more when Burst Data
Transfer mode is used. It comes out to 364 MB/sec when Burst Data Transfer is used.
AGP

Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is an interface specification developed by Intel

Corporation. It enables 3-D graphics(for example, from Web sites or CD-ROMs to display
quickly on ordinary personal computers. It is useful in programs such as gaming,
threedimensional (3D) video, and sophisticated scientific/engineering graphics. AGP has
dedicated point-to-point channel that connects the graphics controller and main memory for
direct access. The AGP channel is 32 bits wide and runs at 66 MHz. This translates into a total
bandwidth of 266 MBps, as opposed to the PCI bandwidth of 133 MBps. AGP also supports two
optional faster modes, with throughputs of 533 MBps and 1.07 GBps. In addition, AGP allows 3-
D textures to be stored in main memory rather than video memory. The system requirements for
AGP are Chipset, motherboard with AGP slot and the operating system must be the OSR 2.1
version of Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 and macintoshes.

The following features are considered optional:

i. Texturing: Also called Direct Memory Execute mode, allows textures to be stored in
main memory.
ii. Throughput: Various levels of throughput are offered: 1X is 266 MBps, 2X is 533
MBps; and 4Xprovides 1.07 GBps
iii. Sideband Addressing: Speeds up data transfers by sending command instructions in a
separate, parallel channel
iv. Pipelining: Enables the graphics card to send several instructions together instead of
sending one at a time.
Processor bus

Processor bus is defined as the bus that provides the path for communication between the
main buses and the central processing unit. It also serves as the communication medium between
the central processing units and other chipboard devices in the CPU. Size of the processor bus
varies with the type of the processor and CPU brand. But it depends on the length of the data
word.

A system bus is a single computer bus that connects the major components of a computer
system, combining the functions of a data bus to carry information, an address bus to determine
where it should be sent, and a control bus to determine its operation.

USB

It is designed to allow many peripherals to be connected using a single standardized

interface. It provides an expandable, fast, bi-directional, low-cost, hot-pluggable Plug and Play
serial hardware interface that allows the users to plug different peripheral devices into a USB
port and have them automatically configured and ready to use. USB allows the user to connect a
wide range of peripheral devices, such as keyboards, mice, printers, scanners, mass storage
devices, telephones, modems, digital still-image cameras, video cameras, audio devices to a
computer. The USB has the following key features:

i. Single connector type: It eliminates the need for different cables and connectors and thus
simplifying the design of the USB devices.USB devices can be connected directly to a
standard USB port on a computer
ii. Hot-swappable: USB devices can be safely plugged and unplugged
iii. Plug and Play: Operating system software automatically identifies, configures, and loads
the appropriate device driver when a user connects a USB device.
iv. High performance: USB offers low speed (1.5 Mbit/s), full speed (12 Mbit/s) and high
speed (up to 480 Mbit/s) transfer rates that can support a variety of USB peripherals.
USB 3.0 (Super Speed USB) achieves the throughput up to 5.0 Gbit/s.
v. Expandability: Up to 127 different peripheral devices may be connected to a single bus at
one time.
vi. Power supplied from the bus: USB distributes the power to all connected devices
eliminating the need for external power source for low-power devices. Highpower
devices can still require their own local power supply. USB also supports power saving
suspend/resume modes.
vii. Easy to use for end user: A single standard connector type for all USB devices simplifies
the end user's task at figuring out which plugs go into which sockets. The operating
system automatically recognizes the USB device attachment and loads appropriate device
drivers.
viii. Low-cost implementation: low-cost connection for peripherals makes the design simple
and low cost.