The evolution of hardware and software
Hardware refers to the phyical elements of a computer, in the likes of the monitor, keyboard, mouse and processing unit. How ever most of computer hardware are inside the computer case.
The motherboard is a piece of hardware that is incharge of connecting data in the deserved places between all of the other components in a computer. It’s a directory tool that tells a data where to go.
Evolution of the motherboard
Earliest computers didn’t have motherboard as we see today. All peripherals and other parts of a computer were not centrally located or connected to a central board. Computers in the 60’s were compromised of several printed circuit boards with components that were connected by a backplane, or a group of interconnected sockets.
In the 70’s microprocessors advanced to a point where more of these functions could be collected on a single printed board—the motherboard. Those functions that are not located on the motherboard are directly connected to it via a series of sockets on smaller daughtercards (geddit?)
In the late 80s, motherboards were personal computers that came with single ICs, also known as Super I/O chips, which allowed the computer to support peripherals that operated to low speeds such as a floppy disk drive, keyboard, or mouse
In the 90’s it becomes more cost-effective to move peripheral and other important computer components to a motherboard. The late 90’s saw a change on computer hardware and software as they came with integrated storage, video, audio, and networking capabilities that removed the need for expansion cards. An increasing amount of motherboard were made in this era with no upgradeable components.
Modern motherboard
The changes and upgrade of momotherboard includes:
• Sockets, or slots, in which multiple microprocessors may be put into a system,
• Slots in which the main memory can be installed.
• A chipset that creates an interface between a CPU’s main memory, peripheral bus, and front-side bus.
• Non-volatile memory chips that contain a system’s bios and firmware.
• A clock generator that creates the clock signal that the system uses to synchronize its various components.
• Expansion card slots.
References and links
Tech by cyril 