Studying CompTIA A+ - mobo types

[AlienBZ]

Hello, I've started studying my CompTIA A+ Study Guide that I got a couple of weeks ago, I'm starting in Chapter 1: "Personal Computer System Components" on the topic "Types of System Boards", where it says "Nonintegrated system board" and there's something I don't understand: the book says "each major assembly is installed in the computer as an expansion card. The major assemblies we're talking about are items like video circuitry, disk controllers, and accessories. Nonintegrated boards can be ID'd b/c each expansion slot is usually occupied by one of these components. It is difficult to find nonintegrated mobo's these days. Many of what would normally be called nonintegrated system boards now incorporate circuitry such as IDE and floppy controllers, serial controllers, and sound cards onto the mobo itself."

so what I don't understand is, if it's difficult to find nonintegrated mobo's these days, why does places like Newegg sell mobo's that have empty slots (such as the CPU socket, AGP/PCI slots, RAM slots) - aren't these nonintegrated system boards?

Also, how can a nonintegrated mobo have their expansion slots already occupied - according to the book, this would be an integrated system board, wouldn't it?

And what exactly does this (from my book) mean - "Many of what would normally be called nonintegrated system boards now incorporate circuitry such as IDE and floppy controllers, serial controllers, and sound cards onto the mobo itself." I understand what it's saying about the circuitry - isn't this the etched-in gold lines that are embedded onto the mobo?

And what exactly are IDE, floppy, serial controllers?

What I don't get is how components such as a sound/video card can be factory-joined onto so-called nonintegrated mobo's of today?

I'm here to learn this stuff. Photos (color preferred if possible) to illustrate with descriptions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

My book I'm studying from is the 2009 edition.

[kiosk]

so what I don't understand is, if it's difficult to find nonintegrated mobo's these days, why does places like Newegg sell mobo's that have empty slots (such as the CPU socket, AGP/PCI slots, RAM slots) - aren't these nonintegrated system boards?


Most mainboards integrate essential components onto themselves these days because all it takes for example, an ethernet controller or an audio adapter is a single tiny chip - no need for an (expensive) expansion card. Almost every board manufactured after 1999 has some level of hardware integration because it saves money in the long run - you don't need to buy special expansion cards to gain access to features you'll almost certainly need at some point. Besides, it's a PR thing - people would rather buy a mainboard that has all the essential stuff integrated than buy a plain-vanilla mainboard and then shell out more cash for additional cards.


Also, how can a nonintegrated mobo have their expansion slots already occupied - according to the book, this would be an integrated system board, wouldn't it?


As I said, nonintegrated mobos require "additional features" in the form of expansion cards, such as ethernet controllers and audio adapters. An exception to this are video cards which are pushing the envelope and become obsolete in a matter of months - it makes sense to have a separate video card you can replace if you want to play the latest game.


And what exactly does this (from my book) mean - "Many of what would normally be called nonintegrated system boards now incorporate circuitry such as IDE and floppy controllers, serial controllers, and sound cards onto the mobo itself." I understand what it's saying about the circuitry - isn't this the etched-in gold lines that are embedded onto the mobo?


Feature integration didn't come all at once on the mainboards. First came the PATA controllers and serial/parallel interfaces, around 1995. Mobo manufacturers later expanded the whole integration scheme onto ethernet controllers and sound adapters because the price of chips became so low that it made economical sense to integrate them on the mainboard itself. Besides, almost every modern computer has a sound/ethernet interface nowadays - it's one of those things you take for granted.


And what exactly are IDE, floppy, serial controllers?


Back in the days of 386, you had a special "paddle card" which handled disk and floppy drive interfaces and communications ports. As I said before, the price of chips became so low that it made no sense to have a separate card to handle these things - it was cheaper to put those same chips on the mainboard itself.


What I don't get is how components such as a sound/video card can be factory-joined onto so-called nonintegrated mobo's of today?


If the board has such features it's not an non-integrated board.


My book I'm studying from is the 2009 edition.

Perhaps you should pick a better book.

[PrntRhd]

Perhaps you should pick a better book.
Not really, but I agree with the rest of the comments.

AlienBZ,
You have to understand some obsolete computer hardware history as part of A+ study. You are studying how the computer hardware functions came into being one by one, first by individual boards in the computer, then using more and more integration. If you don't know about daughter boards you won't understand why some call the main board the motherboard. :)

[AlienBZ]

Mothers and Daughters


Early in the history of the personal computer, the motherboard (also called the mainboard) was little more than a skeleton to which the CPU, chipset, BIOS, and other boards called daughter boards or risers, were attached. The daughter boards contained such peripherals as the drive controllers, input/output controllers, memory banks, and other devices.

Nowadays, virtually all motherboards (or mobo's, to those in the know) integrate these components onto the motherboards themselves. Devices that are included on modern motherboards, but which typically were separate components in earlier PC's, are commonly known by the somewhat oxymoronic term integrated peripherals.

Being able to identify the components on the motherboard is essential to any home computer builder. (It's also a great way to impress family and friends: "That's the SATA connector, right next to the South bridge chipset.")



The parts

Modern motherboards usually include the following on-board components:

The CPU socket (or slot).
The chipset (divided into two parts commonly called the Northbridge and the Southbridge).
Memory (RAM) slots.
Controllers and connections for for the hard drive, floppy drive, and other storage devices.
The BIOS.
Controllers and connectors for the serial ports, parallel ports, USB ports, and sometimes other interfaces such as SCSI or Firewire ports.
In most cases, expansion slots that can accommodate aftermarket expansion cards.

Having read this, I believe what the book was saying is that in early computers, the mobo's had almost nothing on them and you had to add the slots for the CPU, chipset, BIOS, RAM slots, ISA/PCI slots, and IDE connectors in the form of daughterboards (hence the term "nonintegrated mobo's"), but nowadays, these slots/connectors are built into the mobo's (hence the term "integrated system boards"). Am I correct in thinking this?

Also, I realize that some modern integrated mobo's have integrated sound and video cards (otherwise known as "onboard audio, onboard graphics") that is built into the mobo's, especially in some low-cost budget computers. Am I correct in thinking this, also?

[kiosk]

The CPU socket (or slot).


Slotted CPUs were a 1997 thing. Even the mighty Intel which pushed the hell out of Pentium 2 slotted CPUs soon realized that it was a terrible, short-term solution and abandoned the whole concept by 1998. Slotted CPUs were haphazardly replaced by a plethora of mutually incompatible Socket 370 interfaces which leads us to a whole new level of terrible, but let's not delve into that just yet. ;)

[AlienBZ]

Slotted CPUs were a 1997 thing. Even the mighty Intel which pushed the hell out of Pentium 2 slotted CPUs soon realized that it was a terrible, short-term solution and abandoned the whole concept by 1998. Slotted CPUs were haphazardly replaced by a plethora of mutually incompatible Socket 370 interfaces which leads us to a whole new level of terrible, but let's not delve into that just yet. ;)

I reckon you're talking about a board like this, Kiosk?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/286/1

Or could a slotted CPU be like this (see 2nd and the last photos going from top to bottom) in contrast to a socketed CPU?
http://arstechnica.com/guide/building/cpupics.html

[kiosk]

I reckon you're talking about a board like this, Kiosk?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/286/1


That's a Socket 370 (hence - socketed CPU), the only sensible way of connecting a processor to the mainboard.


Or could a slotted CPU be like this (see 2nd and the last photos going from top to bottom) in contrast to a socketed CPU?
http://arstechnica.com/guide/building/cpupics.html

Precisely. "Slotted CPU" is actually a socketed cpu soldered onto a small card which you plug into the mainboard, like a game cart. If you've grown up playing Nintendo, you'll catch my drift.

At first, it made technical sense to have a CPU on a plug-in card. If you examine a Pentium 2 processor for example, you'll see that it has several large cache chips on the flip side of the card. This allowed very fast access to the cache memory - original Socket 7 pentiums and AMD/Cyrix processors didn't have Level 2 cache integrated onto themselves - the cache chips were mounted on the mainboard which was rather slow but very reliable.

Let's return to the Pentium 2 architecture. It soon turned out that Level 2 cache memory could be integrated on the CPU itself (it's one of those things you take for granted these days, but this was not true in the days of Pentium 2), and it was twice as fast as having separate L2 cache chips on the processor card. Intel then dropped the whole cumbersome Slot 1 interface and concentrated on traditional socketed CPUs with (128k) of cache on the CPU die itself and rushed out a new interface, called Socket 370, which was at first used for Mendocino Celerons, and later for Coppermine Pentium 3s and Celerons.

What happened is that people who bought VERY expensive Slot1 mainboards could not upgrade their computers with newer processors (such as Pentium 3) because they only came in Socket 370 form. Intel manufactured tiny numbers of slotted Pentium 3s, but they were hellishly expensive and no-one in their right mind bought them.

It actually gets worse. Not only that there were two versions of Slot1 mainboards (66 and 100 Mhz versions), but there were three versions of Socket 370 interfaces, all incompatible with each other. First came the PGA370 socket, which was used for Mendocino-core Celerons. A year later, when Pentium 3 arrived, Intel churned out a FCPGA370 socket that could take both a Celeron and a Pentium 3, but newer FCPGA processors didn't work in older PGA370 sockets, so you had to buy a whole new mainboard if you wanted a new processor. Later on came a newer version of FCPGA370 socket for Tualatin-core Pentium 3s, which was, as you can guess it, incompatible with pretty much everything, and - you had to buy a new mainboard again.

A solution to this was the "Slotket", which in my opinion is the work of Satan himself. A slotket was a tiny Slot1 card with a Socket 370 on it. You could plug in a socketed Pentium 3 into the slotket, and then jam the whole thing into your old Slot1 board. In practice, this was very unreliable, because slotket manufacturers were almost universally shonksters who made piss-poor products for hapless owners of Slot1 boards who couldn't afford a new board for a new processor and still wanted to upgrade their system.
There were several versions of slotkets, all for different generations of processors, and the only way to tell them apart was to break out the multimeter and measure the resistance between the edge connectors on the card. If you were buying a second-hand Socket 370 board, you never knew what kind of board you'd end up with, because it was often impossible to tell what exactly you were buying, since all Socket 370s looked the same and were often mislabeled (PC CHIPS, I'm looking at you).

Hell I used a slotket for a year or two and had no end of trouble with it. I actually went through three different slotkets during my Slot1 days, and none of them worked reliably. All it took for the computer to hang or cause a BSOD was to lightly tap the computer cabinet - slotkets were notorious for making a poor electrical contact in the slot and even the smallest physical bump could hang the computer.

All in all, this Slot1/Socket 370 disaster seriously hurt Intel's sales for many years to come and brought AMD to the top. Only the ill-educated people with a thick wallet bought Intel in those days - people who knew their stuff with computers bought AMD - and superior, cheaper AMD systems sold like hotcakes in those days.

Edit: the irony of Slot1/Socket 370 is that the whole hype around these interfaces was built on the promise of future upgrades which, in the end, did not eventuate (or were unreasonably expensive). It was simply a massive money-grubbing scheme which backfired on Intel.

[Cuc Tu]

It's fun how things change. If only the automotive manufacturers would get together with the refineries and change the fuel formula so we'd all have to buy new cars every few years...

We use some single board computers (SBC) in our products.

Is there yet a single chip PC? A SoC/CoC

[jlreich]

Is there yet a single chip PC? A SoC/CoC
ASIC's (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) have been around for many years and are usually one chip boards, but I wouldn't call them a PC, a computer yes, but not a PC. As their name indicates they are for specific purposes and used in devices that do basically one thing and nothing else.

But this is way off topic and not really what you were talking about in the first place. :p