Expansion Slots - Lecture notes 3 PDF

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Expansion Slots - Lecture notes...

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Expansion Slots The expansion slots (Figure 2.17) are located on the motherboard. The expansion cards are inserted in the expansion slots. These cards give the computer new features or increased performance. There are several types of slots: • ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) slot—To connect modem and input devices. • PCI (Peripheral Component InterConnect) slot—To connect audio, video and graphics. They are much faster than ISA cards. • AGP (Accelerated Graphic Port) slot—A fast port for a graphics card. • PCI (Peripheral Component InterConnect) Express slot— Faster bus architecture than AGP and PCI buses. • PC Card—It is used in laptop computers. It includes Wi-Fi card, network card and external modem.

Figure 2.17 Expansion slots 2.10.4 Ribbon Cables Ribbon cables (Figure 2.18) are flat, insulated and consist of several tiny wires moulded together that carry data to different components on the motherboard. There is a wire for each bit of the word or byte and additional wires to coordinate the activity of moving information. They also connect the floppy drives, disk drives and CD-ROM drives to the connectors in the motherboard. Nowadays, Serial

Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) cables have replaced the ribbon cables to connect the drives to the motherboard.

Figure 2.18 Ribbon cables inside a PC 2.10.5 Memory Chips The RAM consists of chips on a small circuit board (Figure 2.19). Two types of memory chips— Single In-line Memory Module (SIMM) and Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM) are used in desktop computers. The CPU can retrieve information from DIMM chip at 64 bits compared to 32 bits or 16 bits transfer with SIMM chips. DIMM chips are used in Pentium 4 onwards to increase the access speed.

Figure 2.19 RAM memory chip 2.10.6 Storage Devices

The disk drives are present inside the machine. The common disk drives in a machine are hard disk drive, floppy drive (Figure 2.20 (i & ii)) and CD drive or DVD drive. High-storage devices like hard disk, floppy disk and CDs (Figure 2.20 (iii) & (iv)) are inserted into the hard disk drive, floppy drive and CD drive, respectively. These storage devices can store large amounts of data, permanently. 2.10.7 Processor The processor or the CPU is the main component of the computer. Select a processor based on factors like its speed, performance, reliability and motherboard support. Pentium Pro, Pentium 2 and Pentium 4 are some of the processors.

Figure 2.20 Storage devices (i) Hard disk drive, (ii) DVD drive, (iii) Floppy disk, (iv) CD...