INSIDE

A
COMPUTER
CABINET
Prepared By: Bijay Mishra
 Computer Case

• Contains the major

components of the
computer. It helps
protect them from
outside elements.
• Cases are usually made
from plastic or metal.
Front of the Computer Case
What’s Inside a Computer Case?
Inside the Computer Case
• 5.25” Bays –Hard
drives, Card
Readers, CD
Drives, DVD
Drives, Case
Speakers, 5.25”
cooling fans

Two Common Bay Sizes

• 3.5” Bays –Floppy

or Zip Drives
 Motherboard
• The motherboard is a large printed circuit board (PCB) with
integrated circuitry that connects the various parts of
computer as a CPU, RAM, Disk Drives(CD , DVD, HARD disk,)
• Main component directly attached to the motherboard
include:
 CPU
 Chip Set
 RAM
 BIOS (Basic Input-Output System)
 CMOS (Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor)
 Internal bus
Motherboard
Figure: The Intel Z77 Motherboard (North View).

Figure: The Intel Z77 Motherboard (South View).

Figure: The Intel Z77 Motherboard (East View).

Figure: The Intel Z77 Motherboard (West View).

Figure: The Intel Z77 Motherboard (East View).
Figure: The Intel Z77 Motherboard (West View).
 BIOS

A computer’s
ROM-BIOS (stands
for Read Only
Memory-Basic
Input/Output
System) is a special
chip with
instructions for the
computer to
communicate with
other hardware
parts.
BIOS
 CMOS
• Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor.
• Some memory chips uses CMOS technology
because it provides high speed and consume
little power.
• CMOS technology uses battery power to
retain information even when the power to
the computer off.
CMOS
 Ports and Interfaces
• Motherboard has certain no. of I/O sockets
that are connected to the ports and interfaces.
• Some of them are:
 Serial Port
 Parallel Port
 USB Port
 Firewire Port
 RJ45 Port
 VGA Port
 PS/2 Port
 SCSI Port
 Serial Ports
• The term Serial Port is used to
refer the interface that is
compliant to RS-232 standard.

• Examples: Mouse, Modem,

Printer, etc.

DB9 serial port on back of Computer

 Parallel Ports
• Parallel port is an interface
between computer and
peripheral devices like
printers, scanners, Iomega
Zip drive with parallel
communication.

Hi-Speed USB To DB25 Parallel Port Printer Adapter Cable

 PS/2
• PS/2 connector is developed by IBM for connecting mouse
and keyboard. It was introduced with IBM’s Personal
Systems/2 series of computers and hence the name PS/2
connector.
• PS/2 connectors are color coded as purple for keyboard and
green for mouse.
 VGA Port
• VGA port is found in many computers,
projectors, video cards and High Definition
TVs.
 HDMI Port
• HDMI is an abbreviation of High Definition Media Interface.
• HDMI is a digital interface to connect High Definition and Ultra
High Definition devices like Computer monitors, HDTVs, Blu-
Ray players, gaming consoles, High Definition Cameras etc.
 USB Port
• Universal Serial Bus (USB) replaced serial ports,
parallel ports, PS/2 connectors, game ports and
power chargers for portable devices.
 FireWire
• It is a family of high-speed bidirectional serial transmission
ports that can connect PCs to each other, digital devices to
PCs, or digital devices to each other.
• The most common version of IEEE 1394 is known as IEEE
1394a, and is also known as FireWire.
Figure: An expansion card with 3 USB ports and 2 Firewire ports
 RJ-45
• The interface that is used for computer networking and
telecommunications is known as Registered Jack (RJ) and RJ –
45 port in particular is used for Ethernet over cable.
• RJ-45 connector is an 8 pin – 8 contact (8P – 8C) type modular
connector.
 SCSI Port
• Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) is a set of standards
for physically connecting and transferring data between
computers and peripheral devices.
• SCSI is most commonly used for hard disk drives and tape
drives, but it can connect a wide range of other devices,
including scanners and CD drives, although not all controllers
can handle all devices.
Ports and Interfaces
Also known as an audio card, this type
of expansion card deals with everything
to do with sounds and audio signals
within the computer that are under the
control of programs on the computer.

Figure: A sound card expansion card.

Often called a Network Interface Card or LAN Adapter, a network card is an
expansion card which allows a computer to connect to a computer network
such as a Local Area Network or Wide Area Network.

Figure: A Network card expansion card.

A video card is more often called a graphics card or display
card, and is responsible for generating images to a visual
display such as a computer monitor or laptop screen.
A USB expansion card is used to provide additional connection ports to a
computer by connecting the card to the motherboard. USB is short for
Universal Serial Bus, and is the most common type of port found in modern
computers.
A FIREWIRE CARD IS USED TO PROVIDE COMPUTERS WITH AN IEEE 1394
INTERFACE CONNECTION, ALSO KNOWN AS A FIREWIRE.
A storage card, often also called a flash memory card or simply a
memory card that is connected to a computer in order to provide users
with extra space to store their data on.
A modem card allows a computer to send an analog carrier signal carrying digital
information, and decodes the reverse of this signal in return to reproduce the
original digital data.
A Television Tuner card is a card which is inserted into a computer to allow
a device to receive television signals.
 Expansion Slots
• An expansion slot is a socket on the motherboard
that can hold adapter card
• An adapter card / expansion card, is a circuit board
that is to enhance some functions of a system
component and/or provide connections to
peripherals.
• Adapter card is bridge between CPU & the
peripherals used to connect or enhance the
peripheral performance
• Examples: Sound card, Video card
Expansion Slots
 ISA Slot
• Industry Standard
Architecture
• ISA is an expansion
slot found only in
Windows based
computers
• Now-a-days it is of not
much in use.
• Most Window based
computers today
contain a mix of PCI
and ISA slots.
 PCI Slot
• The Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots are mainly used
for network interface cards, sound cards, graphic cards, modem
cards, and cards that supply extra ports for the computer.

Figure: PCI slots on a motherboard

 AGP Slot
• In 1996, Intel introduced Accelerates Graphics Port (AGP) as a
more efficient way to deliver streaming video and real-time-
rendered 3-D graphics.
• Used only for a graphics or video card.

Figure: an AGB based graphics card

AGP Slot
 PCI Express Slot
• PCIe, or Peripheral Component Interconnect Express,
is a computer expansion card standard designed to
replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP standards.
• PCI Express is used in consumer, server, and
industrial applications, as a motherboard-level
interconnect (to link motherboard-mounted
peripherals) and as an expansion card interface for
add-in boards.
PCI Express
 PC Card Slot
• A PC Card (previously known as a PCMCIA card) is a credit
card-size memory or I/O device that fits into a personal
computer, usually a notebook or laptop computer.
• Probably the most common use of a PC Card is the
telecommunications modem for notebook computers.
Expansion Slots/ Expansion Cards
Expansion Slots/ Expansion Cards
 (IDE) ATA Interface
• Usually, these devices connect to the computer through an
Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface.
• The original name is AT Attachment (ATA) or parallel ATA
(PATA)

Serial ATA (SATA)

• Serial ATA was designed to replace the older parallel ATA
(PATA) standard
Figure: Left A close-up of the primary and secondary IDE interfaces on a
motherboard; Right The connector on an IDE cable, the stripe denotes where to
align with Pin 1.
Figure: Left The 7-Pin SATA data cable (angled end); Right The SATA data
cable (angled and
straight ends);
 Ribbon Cables
• A ribbon cable is a cable with many conducting wires
running parallel to each other on the same flat plane.
• Ribbon cables are usually seen for internal
peripherals in computers, such as hard drives, CD
drives and floppy drives.
 Memory Chips
• A memory chip is an integrated circuit made
out of millions of capacitors and transistors
that can store data or can be used to process
code.
RAM Chips
 Storage Devices
Some Common Devices for Secondary Storage:
– Magnetic tape and disks
– Compact Disk Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM)
– Write Once Read Many - (WORM)
– Magneto-optical disks
– Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
– Optical disks
– Digital Video Disks
– Memory cards
– Flash memory
– Removable storage
Storage Devices

Solid State Drive

Storage Devices

Flash Memory
Storage Devices

Hard Disk
 Storage Devices

8-inch
floppy
disk

5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk 3 1⁄2-inch

floppy disk

Floppy Disks and Drives

Storage Devices

Floppy Disks
 Storage Devices/Drives

CD ROM BD-ROM

DVD RW

Optical Disc Drives

 DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)

CD (Compact Disc) Blu-ray Disc

Optical Discs
 Processor
• The computer’s brain or heart, the CPU is a computer’s main
chip.
• Called as microprocessor or CPU
• CPU interprets & carries out the instruction for operating the
computer as a device
• On personal computer, all functions of processor usually on a
single chip.
• Processor contain Registers, CU & ALU.
• These component work together to perform processing
operation.
Processor
 Processor
• A multi-core processor is a single chip with
two or more separate processor core
• A dual-core processor is a chip that contains
two separate processor core
• A quad-core processor is a chip that contains
four separate processor core
Processor Coolers
 Types of Processors
On the basis of instruction set, microprocessors
are classified as:
1. RISC
2. CISC
 COMPLEX INSTRUCTION SET COMPUTER (CISC)
• A computer with large no of instruction is classified as complex instruction
set computer (CISC).
• The essential goal of a CISC architecture is to attempt to provide a single
machine instruction for each statement that is written in a high-level
language.
• It is the design of the CPU where one instruction performs many low-level
operations.
 Example of CISC PROCESSORS

IBM 370/168 – It was introduced in the year 1970. CISC

design is a 32 bit processor and four 64-bit floating point
registers.

VAX 11/780 – CISC design is a 32-bit processor and it

supports many numbers of addressing modes and
machine instructions which is from Digital Equipment
Corporation.

Intel 80486 – It was launched in the year 1989 and it is a

CISC processor, which has instructions varying lengths
from 1 to 11 and it will have 235 instructions.
 REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET COMPUTER (RISC)
• The concept of RISC architecture involves attempt to reduce
execution time by simplifying the instruction set of the computer.
• RISC is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified
instruction set gives higher performance when combined with a
microprocessor architecture which has the ability to execute the
instructions by using some microprocessor cycles per instruction.
 Example of RISC PROCESSORS
• The PowerPC microprocessor (old Mac) , used in IBM's RISC
System/6000 workstation and Macintosh computers, is a RISC
microprocessor.

• CDC 6600, highly innovative supercomputer of the mid 1960s

• IBM 801, influential single-chip processor project of the late

1970s

• In the early 1980s, two projects brought RISC to the forefront:

UC Berkeley’s RISC 1 and 2, forerunners of the Sun SPARC
Stanford’s MIPS, later marketed by a company of the same
name

• Other Examples: SparcTM, AlphaTM, etc.

Differences Between RISC and CISC
Parallel Processing

• The simultaneous use of more than one CPU to execute a

program is called Parallel processing.
• When a system processes two different instructions
simultaneously, it is performing parallel processing.
• In general, parallel processing means that at least two
microprocessors handle parts of an overall task.
• Parallel Processing encompasses a wide variety of different
things:
Intel Core Duo, Quad, Cell multiprocessors, networked and
distributed computer systems, SETI@Home, Folding@Home,
neural nets are all examples
IBM's Blue Gene/P massively parallel supercomputer.
Parallel Processing
 Pipelining
• Pipelining is used by virtually all modern microprocessors to
enhance performance by overlapping the execution of
instructions.
• A technique of decomposing a sequential process into sub-
operations, with each sub-process being executed in a partial
dedicated segment that operates concurrently with all other
segments.
• A common analogue for a pipeline is a factory assembly line.
• Assume that there are Four stages:
1. Welding
2. Painting
3. Polishing
4. Storing
• For simplicity, assume that each task takes one hour.
Important Questions of Chapter 1 and 2
Give differences between the following:
1. Registers and cache memory
2. Cache memory and RAM
3. RISC and CISC
4. System bus and expansion bus
5. Data bus, address bus and control bus
6. Analog and Digital Computer
7. Microcomputer and Minicomputer
8. Minicomputer and Mainframe Computer
9. Mainframe computer and Supercomputer
 Important Questions of Chapter 1 and 2
• “The motherboard is characterized by the form factor, chipset and the type of
processor socket used”. Explain.
• Give a detailed working of the instruction cycle.
• “Two processors are compatible”. How do you deduce this statement?
• “This is a 64–bit processor”. Explain its meaning.
• Why are Registers used in the CPU?
• Define word size.
• What is the function of the BIOS?
• What is the function of the CMOS chip?
• “The motherboard is characterized by the form factor, chipset and the type of
processor socket used”. Explain.
• Where is the expansion card fixed on the motherboard?
• Explain briefly the developments in computer technology starting from a
simple calculating machine to the first computer.