Overview of a PC

1
Overview of a PC

• Brian Hall 2009

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Motherboards

• The motherboard is the data and power
  infrastructure for the entire computer.
• Multiple-lane highways of various widths
  transport data between the components
• They make it easy to add new features to a
  machine to enhance performance

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Form Factors

• The form factor is essentially the size, shape
  and design of the actual motherboard
• what sorts of cases and power supplies it can
  use, and its physical organization
• Contains pre-soldered/installed components such
  as chip set and BIOS

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Schematic View
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Chip Set

• Chip Set controls data transfers between
• And is one of the most critical issues in PC speed

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Controller Chips

• Another set of chips called controller chips
  handle communication with directly connected
  peripherals such as
• There is also a super I/O chip which handles
  indirectly connected peripherals such as

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BIOS

• most important role is to load the operating
  system
• Can be more than 1 BIOS (e.g. on SCSI cards,
  video cards etc.)

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Functions of BIOS

• Check the CMOS setup for custom settings
• Load the interrupt handlers and device drivers
• Initialise registers and power management

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Functions of BIOS contd.

• Display system settings
• Determine which devices are bootable
• Initiate the bootstrap sequence

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Configuring BIOS

• Mouse/Keyboard

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Configuring BIOS contd.

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System Buses

• the processor, cache, memory, expansion cards and
  storage devices, talk to each other over one or
  more "buses".
• different buses for different uses

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Bus Hierarchy

• Modern PCs have at least four buses

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Bus Hierarchy contd.

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Bus Properties