What is Motherboard ? History of Motherboards | All about a Motherboard | Tech Flecks

What is Motherboard ? History of Motherboards | All about a Motherboard 

The only way you can connect a compact and completely working computer in minutes today is by connecting a CPU, a RAM stick, a storage unit and power supply to a micro ITX motherboard. This can only be achieved by integrating the mean motherboard into a tiny sheet like fiberglass metal and silicon because of its different functions. But it wasn't like that still.

Currently, early electronics had nothing like the stunning green boards and black integrated circuits used to today. Rather, each condenser resistor and other part required for constructing a complete computer system were typically seen in full-sized wires. It was shocking that lots of space was taken and a lot of weight was applied and the impressed circuit board was taken off reasonably delicate. It should be remembered however beginning in the fifties, that the early PCBs were quite a long way removed from the RGB motherboard that you might now get on your computer.

During that time there should have been one basic system like a radio using just one PCB (Printed Circuit Boards). Computers with maximum capability required a variety of circuit boards to perform numerous functions connected to a backplan that, unlike the true motherboards, you would view as a forerunner of the modern motherboard. However, these backplane usually consisted of stupid connections with nothing more than a few slots in a row that could be fitted with other expansion cards.

For example, in 1982, we had a major update to the planar board in the original IBM PC, featuring an Intel 8088 CPU installed in a memory and the actual external IO, with an Altair 8800 slot for memory adding a new cpu. It was also something more than just a glorified package of smooshed wire. All that you could directly attach was a keyboard and a tape drive, but even a few expansion slots were not very far from what we have today. These slots were crucial because they were also so basic that they had no functionality that they consider necessary, including drive headers.

You would need a Standalone disk interface card for example if you had to load your copy of your Flight Simulator 1.0 and we couldn't find new memory modules in RAM slots at the end either of the 80s, by the mid-1980s.

Thus little iCS called super i/o chips were becoming more popular even though engineers had thoroughly accepted the intent of integrating more and more functions on the motherboard. The drive controllers were now ports for printers, mice keypads and other gadgets or bios programs, like primitive versions in a modern chipset. This doesn't all look like a big lot now, but better i/o chips took less room and were substantially more economical than expansion cards that set up the scene for fully-functioned, modern motherboards in 1987.

In fact, when IBM launches Model 50 of its nearly popular personal device, we have the first ever integrated VGA graphic chips — unlike current integrated GPUs. However, this was a chip connected to the motherboard rather than integrated into the CPU itself.

In the mid 1990s, a paradigm that was seen again as 3d GPUs such as S3 and ATI rage ranges was seen on the motherboards which avoided the need for a separate basic card, whereas the GPUs that were soldered on the motherboards started to vanish for those installed into CPUs by the middle of 2010.

Let's go back to 1989 with CPUs, where the first Processor socket was introduced alongside a vaguely new socket 1. Intel's very common 486 processor during earlier designs involved the solderation of the CPU directly to the board or considerable strength on the part of the user to insert or remove the socket. However, with a mere 169 pins, CPU sockets were still evolving at the time, not just because they got simple expansion slots. It was about time that the old one was used as a standard since the days of the IBM PC.

In 1994, PCI became popular on consumer PCs, followed by the short live AGP for graphics cards in 1997 and PCI Express, which is still available today, in 2004. Well there were a few private network protocols in the mid 1980s but, since Ethernet is a relatively simple standard, it is a go-to networking in late 80's, and again its simplicity means it rapidly extended into PC motherboards in the early 1990s. The Ethernet was a relatively simple standard of simple physical design.

While, in late 80s and early 90s sound cards were also introduced on the market and there were some internal speakers which could emit beeps and bleeps. Only in 1999, Intel launched the AC 97 standard in its 810 chipset, which was by the way the first Intel chipset that featured integrated graphics, did we see true completely usable onboard optical sound. A separate video processing chip on either the motherboard or an adapter card was not required any longer, but now both of these developments are clearly built into the PC motherboard.

The computing ability to cope with all of the various features was made possible by reduced costs and the continued miniaturisation of the components not to mention the fact that in these days even small form factor motherboards feature RGB headers premium power supply and Wi-Fi.