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Expansion Card

Fitting an expansion card into a motherboard
Date Invented: 1974
Invented By: MITS
Connects to:
Card Types:

An expansion card (also expansion board, adapter card or accessory card) in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an expansion slot of a computer motherboard to add additional functionality to a computer system. A motherboard is the central or primary Printed circuit board (PCB making up a complex electronic system such as a modern Computer or Laptop Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems ( MITS) was an Albuquerque, New Mexico company founded in 1969 by Forrest Mims and Ed Roberts Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to ISA) was a Computer bus standard for IBM compatible computers The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (commonly PCI) specifies a Computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a Computer Not to be confused with PCI-X, a different bus architecture Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, officially abbreviated as PCI-E An expansion card (also expansion board, adapter card or accessory card) in Computing is a Printed circuit board that can be inserted A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is a hardware component whose function is to A sound card (also known as an audio card is a Computer Expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to/from a computer under A Network card, Network Adapter, LAN Adapter or NIC (network interface card is a piece of Computer hardware designed to allow computers Modem (from mo dulator- dem odulator is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode Digital information An expansion card (also expansion board, adapter card or accessory card) in Computing is a Printed circuit board that can be inserted Computing is usually defined like the activity of using and developing Computer technology Computer hardware and software. A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect Electronic components using conductive pathways or traces A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. A motherboard is the central or primary Printed circuit board (PCB making up a complex electronic system such as a modern Computer or Laptop One edge of the expansion card holds the contacts (the edge connector) that fit exactly into the slot. An edge connector is the portion of a Printed circuit board consisting of traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching socket They establish the electrical contact between the electronics (mostly integrated circuits) on the card and on the motherboard. Microchipsjpg|right|thumb|200px|Microchips ( EPROM memory with a transparent window showing the integrated circuit inside

Connectors mounted on the bracket allow the connection of external devices to the card. Depending on the form factor of the motherboard and case, around one to seven expansion cards can be added to a computer system. There are also other factors involved in expansion card capacity. For example, some expansion cards need two slots like some NVidia GeForce FX and newer GeForce graphics cards and there is often a space left to aid cooling on some high-end cards. The multinational NVIDIA Corporation ( (ɪnˈvɪdiə specializes in the manufacture of graphics-processor technologies for Workstations The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series ( Codenamed NV30) is a line of Graphics cards from the manufacturer Nvidia.

Some cards are "low-profile" cards, meaning that they take up little physical space. (There is a "low profile PCI card" standard [1] [2] that specifies a much smaller bracket and board area). The group of expansion cards that are used for external connectivity, such as a network, SAN or modem card, are commonly referred to as input/output cards (or I/O cards). A Network card, Network Adapter, LAN Adapter or NIC (network interface card is a piece of Computer hardware designed to allow computers In Information technology, a storage area network ( SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as Disk arrays tape libraries Modem (from mo dulator- dem odulator is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode Digital information

Dimensions for the metal plate on the expansion card is 120mm wide, and 18mm high.

Contents

History of the expansion card

The first microcomputer to feature a slot-type expansion card bus was the Altair 8800, developed 1974-1975. A personal computer ( PC) is any Computer whose original sales price size and capabilities make it useful for individuals and which is intended to be operated The MITS Altair 8800 was a Microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold as a mail-order kit through advertisements in Initially, implementations of this bus were proprietary (such as the Apple II and Macintosh), but by 1982 manufacturers of Intel 8080/Zilog Z80-based computers running CP/M had settled around the S-100 standard. Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The Intel 8080 was an early Microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit Microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers is an Operating system originally created for Intel 8080 / 85 based Microcomputers by Gary Kildall The S-100 bus, IEEE696 -1983 (withdrawn, was an early Computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today IBM introduced the XT bus, with the first IBM PC in 1981; it was then called the PC bus, as the IBM XT, using the same bus (with slight exception,) was not to be introduced until 1983. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology XT (a. k. a. 8-bit ISA) was replaced with ISA (a. k. a. 16-bit ISA,) originally known as AT bus, in 1984. IBM's MCA bus, developed for the PS/2 in 1987, was a competitor to ISA, also their design, but fell out of favor due to the ISA's industry-wide acceptance and IBM's closed licensing of MCA. Micro Channel Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to MCA) was a proprietary 16- or 32-bit parallel Computer bus EISA, the 16-bit extended version of ISA championed by Compaq, was common on PC motherboards until 1997, when Microsoft declared it a "legacy" subsystem in the PC 97 industry white-paper. The PC System Design Guide (also known as the PC 97, PC 98, PC 99, or PC 2001 specification is a series of hardware design requirements and VESA Local Bus, an early 1990s expansion bus that was inherently tied to the 80486 CPU, became obsolete (along with the processor) when Intel launched the Pentium CPU in 1993. The VESA Local Bus (usually abbreviated to VL-Bus or VLB) was mostly used in personal computers The Pentium brand refers to Intel 's single-core x86 Microprocessor based on the P5 fifth-generation Microarchitecture.

The PCI bus was introduced in 1991 as replacement for ISA. The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (commonly PCI) specifies a Computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a Computer The standard (now at version 3. 0) is found on PC motherboards to this day. Intel introduced the AGP bus in 1997 as a dedicated video acceleration solution. Though termed a bus, AGP supports only a single card at a time. From 2005 PCI-Express has been replacing both PCI and AGP. This standard, approved [by who?] in 2004, implements the logical PCI protocol over a serial communication interface.

After the S-100 bus, this article above mentions only buses used on IBM-compatible/Windows-Intel PCs. Most other computer lines that were not IBM compatible, including those from Tandy, Commodore, Amiga, and Atari, offered their own expansion buses. Tandy Corporation was a family-owned Leather goods company based in Fort Worth Texas, which is best known for purchasing and giving its name to the Fort Worth Commodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a US-American Electronics company based in West Chester Pennsylvania The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. Even many video game consoles, such as the Sega Genesis, included expansion buses; at least in the case of the Genesis, the expansion bus was proprietary, and in fact the cartridge slots of many cartridge based consoles (not including the Atari 2600) would qualify as expansion buses, as they exposed both read and write capabilities of the system's internal bus. The is a 16-bit Video game console released by Sega in Japan in 1988 North America in 1989 and the PAL region in 1990 The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 However, the expansion modules attached to these interfaces, though functionally the same as expansion cards, are not technically expansion cards, due to their physical form.

For their 1000 EX and 1000 HX models, Tandy Computer designed the PLUS expansion interface, an adaptation of the XT-bus supporting cards of a smaller form factor. The Tandy 1000 was the first in a line of more or less IBM PC compatible Home computer systems produced by the Tandy Corporation for sale in its Radio The Tandy 1000 was the first in a line of more or less IBM PC compatible Home computer systems produced by the Tandy Corporation for sale in its Radio Because it is electrically compatible with the XT bus (a. k. a. 8-bit ISA or XT-ISA,) a passive adapter can be made to connect XT cards to a PLUS expansion connector. Another feature of PLUS cards is that they are stackable. Another bus that offered stackable expansion modules was the "sidecar" bus used by the IBM PCjr. The IBM PCjr (read "PC junior" was IBM 's first attempt to enter the market for relatively inexpensive Educational and home-use personal This may have been electrically the same as or similar to the XT bus; it most certainly had some similarities since both essentially exposed the 8088 CPU's address and data buses, with some buffering and latching, the addition of interrupts and DMA provided by Intel add-on chips, and a few system fault detection lines (Power Good, Memory Check, I/O Channel Check. In Computing, an interrupt is an asynchronous signal from hardware indicating the need for attention or a synchronous event in software indicating the need for a change Direct memory access ( DMA) is a feature of modern Computers and Microprocessors that allows certain hardware subsystems within the computer to access system In document ISO/CD 10303-226, a fault is defined as an abnormal condition or defect at the component equipment or sub-system level which may lead to a Failure. ) Again, PCjr sidecars are not technically expansion cards, but expansion modules, with the only difference being that the sidecar is an expansion card enclosed in a plastic box (with holes exposing the connectors. )

Expansion slot standards

Expansion card types

External links

Released sometime before June 25 2005 the i-RAM is a Solid-state drive produced by Gigabyte which has four DIMM slots to allow PC DDR
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