motherboard
Also called the "system board," it is the main printed circuit board in an electronic device, which contains sockets that accept additional boards. In a desktop computer, the motherboard contains the CPU, chipset, PCI bus slots, AGP slot, memory sockets and controller circuits for the keyboard, mouse, disks and printer. It may also have built-in controllers for modem, sound, display and network, obviating the need to plug in a card. A laptop motherboard typically has all peripheral controllers built in. See CPU, chipset, PCI, AGP and controller.
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| Motherboard |
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| This is a Baby AT style motherboard for a PC. The adapter cards (expansion boards) plug into the expansion slots on the motherboard. |
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| The Mother of All Motherboards |
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| This is the front and back of the prototype of the first IBM PC motherboard in 1981. The chips are wired together on a "breadboard" designed for making new system boards. (Images courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation. Unauthorized use not permitted.) |
motherboard [
′məth·ər‚bȯrd]
(computer science)
A common pathway over which information is transmitted between the hardware devices (the central processing unit, memory, and each of the peripheral control units) in a microcomputer.
| (hardware) | motherboard - (mobo) The main printed circuit board in an
electronic device, particularly a computer, which may contain
sockets that accept additional boards ("daughter-boards").
In a personal computer, the motherboard contains the bus,
the microprocessor, and integrated circuits used for
controlling any built-in peripherals such as the keyboard,
text and graphics display, serial ports and parallel ports, joystick, and mouse interfaces. | |
