What Does What?
There are many thousands of computing terms you may have heard of but haven't got a clue what they mean. Well in this section I'm going to point out a few of these which are relevant and essential knowledge for you, the PC technician that u'll be by the time uv finished reading my web page!
Before
you start up grading your PC you should take off the cover and take a look
inside. You'll find several small "cards", lots of cables and
your hard drive, floppy drive and CD drives if you have any. Behind all of
will be the largest component in you system. Called the main board or
Motherboard, this acts as the backbone to your system. Every other
component is connected to this and it is this component that will determines how
upgradeable your system is.
At the bottom of the board there (underneath the 6 white slots) there is a longer black slot. This is called the ISA slot (industry Standard Adapter). Possible on your computer you may have more of these, generally the newer your motherboard is the less it will have. These have been more or less completely replaced by the white slots that can be found above the ISA ones which are called PCI. Finally Above the PCI slots is and AGP slot. This is a dedicated graphics card slot, therefore only graphics cards can be fitted in it. Not all boards have one of these, even brand new boards. This is something I recommend to make sure your board has if you ever buy a new PC especially if your a gamer because this enable you to install the most powerful graphics cards on the market.
Ok, now we've sorted out your PCI's from your ISA's you'll want to know what all the other bits on the board do. Well, near the top right of the diagram there are 4 vertical slots. These are the SDRAM slots (see installing Memory section for more details). You may not have 4, possibly as few as one, however you may have none at all if your board is getting on abit now. Instead you'll find white slots on your board with little silver clips at the end. These require you to use EDO RAM rather than the new SDRAM. Like I said before, check the RAM guide out.
Ok, now you've got the brains on RAM
you'll want to know about the brains of your computer. This part, called
the processor by many and the CPU (central processing unit) by many others has
to be suited to your main board. By this is mean if you have a board for
athlon
Processors don't try and put a Pentium 3 in it! The processor is fitted
into the white square found at the top of the board. You can see the processor
in your computer because it will have a heat sink and Fan on op of it.
This is because they run extremely hot and this is the best way to keep them
cool (still around 50-70 C)
Last but not least, and what most of you guys want to know is about connecting extra CD ROM drives or more likely ReWriters. All you need to know that if you buy an IDE drive They connect into the IDE connector on your board. On the above they are blue and there is 4, however this is a very new board so yours will only have 2.(and not necessarily blue!). The two connecter can each have to ribbon (cables) connected to them. The 1st one is called the Primary IDE, the second the Secondary IDE. You'll find that the Primary is the one that your hard drive is already connected to. Each ribbon can have 2 devices, A master and a slave device. How to set these can be found in the section about fitting a Drive. Therefore if you have 2 IDE connector you can have 4 devices and if you have 4 IDE connecters (as Above) you can have 8 :)
Please note that you board will not look identical to the one above and the amount of connecters and position of the may vary. However im sure this example will help you find your way around your motherboard. if not check your manual and there will no doubt be a simplified drawing of your main board which is clearly marked with all the different part I have mentioned. Here's another example