PC Hardware A Beginner’s Guide

I n the early days of the PC, very little support was included in the motherboard for peripheral devices. The controllers and ad ...

the card into the system bus structures. An expansion slot contains metallic, typically copper, springy fingers that clamp onto ...

(^222) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide The challenges of working with expansion cards, beyond choosing the right one, are instal ...

Chapter 11: Expansion Cards^223 was originally featured. Compare its edge connectors to those of the expansion cards for the oth ...

(^224) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide The PCI bus supports 32-bit and 64-bit interfaces and full Plug-and-Play capability, whic ...

Chapter 11: Expansion Cards^225 Figure 11-5. A PCI bus network interface card Figure 11-6. The placement of the expansion slots ...

Bus Mastering The PCI bus architecture includes a technology called bus mastering that allows an ex- pansion card to directly tr ...

Chapter 11: Expansion Cards^227 The PCMCIA has developed standards for three PC Card slot sizes (and the devices that fit them): ...

(^228) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Figure 11-8. A Type II PC Card network interface and connection dongle Figure 11-9. A Typ ...

Hot Swap PC Cards are hot-swappable, which means they can be inserted and removed while the system is running and do not require ...

removed from a PC without the need for rebooting or proprietary installation proce- dures. Windows 98/2000 directly supports USB ...

Controller Cards Acontroller,a.k.a.adapter,cardisatypeofexpansioncardthatcontainsthecircuitryand components needed to control th ...

(^232) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Figure 11-11. A PCI parallel port expansion card Figure 11-12. A PCI expansion card that ...

Memory Cards Most PC technicians do not think of memory modules as expansion cards, but in the strictest interpretation of an ex ...

As Figure 11-14 illustrates, a MEC is able to mount a number of memory modules (usually DIMMs). The card illustrated has 8 memor ...

activity of themodem. However, when using an internal modem, because it is mounted inside the system case, the user must rely on ...

(^236) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Figure 11-16. A PCI modem expansion card. Photo courtesy of 3Com/U.S. Robotics Figure 11- ...

Chapter 11: Expansion Cards^237 You can find sound cards for both the ISA and PCI interfaces, but most sources rec- ommend using ...

(^238) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide Video Processors Video cards all have some level of processing capability. The onboard pr ...

Chapter 11: Expansion Cards^239 Most video cards are standard with at least 16MB of memory; some go all the way up to 64MB of VR ...