Aim

To familiarize with different components and external ports of a Motherboard.

Computer Motherboard and its constituent components:

There are primarily two types of motherboards, AT motherboard, and ATX motherboard. AT motherboards
are older, and not commonly used now a days. The AT and ATX motherboards differ in the form factor.
Full AT is 12" wide x 13.8" deep, and Baby AT is 8.57" wide x 13.04" deep. Full-ATX is 12" wide x 9.6"
deep and Mini-ATX is 11.2" wide x 8.2" deep. Other major differences include power supply connector,
and keyboard connector. AT has 5-pin large keyboard connector, where as ATX has 6-pin mini connector.
Similarly, AT has single row two connectors +/-5V, and +/-12V, whereas ATX motherboard has double
row single connector providing +/-5V, +/-12V, and +3.3V.

The important constituent components of an ATX Motherboard are given below:

1. Mouse & keyboard connectors

2. USB ports
3. Parallel port
4. CPU Chip
5. RAM slots
6. Floppy controller
7. IDE controller
8. PCI slot
9. ISA slot
10. CMOS Battery
11. AGP slot
12. CPU slot
13. Power supply plug in

1. Mouse & keyboard: Keyboard Connectors are two types basically. All PCs have a Key board port
connected directly to the motherboard. The oldest, but still quite common type, is a special DIN, and
most PCs until recently retained this style connector. The AT-style keyboard connector is quickly
disappearing, being replaced by the smaller mini DIN PS/2-style keyboard connector.

We can use an AT-style keyboard with a PS/2-style socket (or the other way around)
by using a converter. Although the AT connector is unique in PCs, the PS/2-style mini-DIN is also
used in more modern PCs for the mouse. Most PCs that use the mini-DIN for both the keyboard
and mouse clearly mark each mini-DIN socket as to its correct use. Some keyboards have a USB
connection, but these are fairly rare compared to the PS/2 connection keyboards.

2. USB (Universal serial bus):

USB is the General-purpose connection for PC. We can find USB versions of many different
devices, such as mice, keyboards, scanners, cameras, and even printers. A USB connector's
distinctive rectangular shape makes it easily recognizable.

USB has a number of features that makes it particularly popular on PCs. First, USB devices are hot
swappable. They can be inserted or removed without restarting the system.

3. Parallel port: Most printers use a special connector called a parallel port. Parallel port carry data
on more than one wire, as opposed to the serial port, which uses only one wire. Parallel ports use a
25-pin female DB connector. Parallel ports are directly supported by the motherboard through a
direct connection or through a dangle.

4. CPU Chip : The central processing unit, also called the microprocessor performs all the
calculations that take place inside a pc. CPUs come in Variety of shapes and sizes.
Modern CPUs generate a lot of heat and thus require a cooling fan or heat sink. The cooling device
(such as a cooling fan) is removable, although some CPU manufactures sell the CPU with a fan
permanently attached.

5. RAM slots: Random-Access Memory (RAM) stores programs and data currently being used by
the CPU. RAM is measured in units called bytes. RAM has been packaged in many different ways.
The most current package is called a 168-pin DIMM (Dual Inline Memory module).

6. Floppy controller: The floppy drive connects to the computer via a 34-pin ribbon cable, which in
turn connects to the motherboard. A floppy controller is one that is used to control the floppy drive.

7. IDE controller: Industry standards define two common types of hard drives: EIDE and
SATA. Majority of the PCs use EIDE drives. SATA is also very popular. The EIDE drive connects to
the hard drive via a 2-inch-wide, 40-pin ribbon cable, which in turn connects to the motherboard.
IDE controller is responsible for controlling the hard drive. SATA, short for Serial ATA, is an IDE
standard for connecting devices like optical drives and hard drives to the motherboard. The term
SATA generally refers to the types of cables and connections that follow this standard. Serial ATA
replaces Parallel ATA as the IDE standard of choice for connecting storage devices inside of a
computer. SATA storage devices can transmit data to and from the rest of the computer over twice
as fast as an otherwise similar PATA device

8. PCI slot: Intel introduced the Peripheral component interconnect bus protocol. The PCI bus is
used to connect I/O devices (such as NIC or RAID controllers) to the main logic of the computer.
PCI bus has replaced the ISA bus.

9. ISA slot: (Industry Standard Architecture) It is the standard architecture of the Expansion bus.
Motherboard may contain some slots to connect ISA compatible cards.

10. CMOS Battery: To provide CMOS with the power when the computer is turned off all
motherboards comes with a battery. These batteries mount on the motherboard in one of three
ways: the obsolete external battery, the most common onboard battery, and built-in battery.

11. AGP slot: In modern motherboards, there will be a single connector that looks like a PCI slot,
but is slightly shorter and usually brown. A video card inserted into this slot. This is an Advanced
Graphics Port (AGP) slot.

12. CPU slot: To install the CPU, just slide it straight down into the slot. Special notches in the slot
make it impossible to install them incorrectly. If it is not going easily, it may not be correct. The
CPU fan's power cable should be connected to the slot on motherboard.

13. Power supply plug in:

The Power supply, as its name implies, provides the necessary electrical power to make the pc
operate. The power supply takes standard 110-V AC power and converts into +/-12-Volt, +/-5-Volt,
and 3.3-Volt DC power.

The power supply connector has 20-pins, and the connector can go in only one direction.
Output

Various parts of a Motherboard are familiarized.

Layout of a modern ATX motherboard. (Asus A8N-LA)

A typical ATX PC motherboard with constituent components:

1. Mouse & keyboard connectors

2. USB ports
3. Parallel port
4. CPU Chip
5. RAM slots
6. Floppy controller
7. IDE controller
8. PCI slot
9. ISA slot
10. CMOS Battery
11. AGP slot
12. CPU slot
13. Power supply plug in
Back panel connectors on an ATX motherboard
No : 2

Familiarisation of ADD ON Cards

Aim : To get familiarized with different add on cards.

Network card

A network card (also called a Network Adapter or Network Interface Card, or NIC for short) acts as the interface
between a computer and a network cable. The purpose of the network card is to prepare, send, and control data
on the network.

A network card usually has two indicator lights (LEDs):

The green LED shows that the card is receiving electricity;

The orange (10 Mb/s) or red (100 Mb/s) LED indicates network activity (sending or receiving data). To prepare
data to be sent the network card uses a transceiver, which transforms parallel data into serial data. Each cart has a
unique address, called a MAC address, assigned by the card's manufacturer, which lets it be uniquely identified
among all the network cards in the world.

VGA Card

Technically VGA stands for Video Graphics Array, a 640x480 video standard introduced in 1987. At the time that
was a relative high resolution, especially for a colour display. Before VGA was introduced there were a few other
graphics standards, such as hercules which displayed either text (80 lines of 25 chars) or for relative high definition
monochrome graphics (at 720x348 pixels).Other standards at the time were CGA (Colour graphic adapter), which
also allowed up to 16 colours at a resolution of up to 640x200 pixels A noteworthy PC standard was the Enhanced
graphics adapter (EGA), which allowed resolutions up to 640350 with 64 colours. Then in 1987 IBM introduced
the PS2 computer. It had several noteworthy differences compared with its predecessors, which included new ports
for mice and keyboards and a new graphic adapter with both a high resolution and many colours. This graphics
standard was called Video Graphics Array. It used a 3 row, 15 pin connector to transfer analog signals to a monitor.
This connector is lasted until a few years ago, when it got replaced by superior digital standards such as DVI and
display port.

AGP card

The Accelerated Graphics Port (often shortened to AGP) is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video
card to a computer system, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. It was originally designed
as a successor to PCI-type connections for video cards.

It is an advanced port designed for Video cards and 3D accelerators. Designed by Intel and introduced in August of
1997, AGP introduces a dedicated point-to-point channel that allows the graphics controller direct access to the
system memory. A computer with AGP support has one AGP slot next to all other expansion slots or an on-board
AGP video.

The AGP channel is 32-bits wide and runs at 66 MHz, which is a total bandwidth of 266 MBps and much greater
than the PCI bandwidth of up to 133 MBps. AGP also supports two optional faster modes, with a throughput of 533
MBps and 1.07 GBps. It also allows 3-D textures to be stored in main memory rather than video memory.

IDE Card

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) is a standard electronic interface used between a computer motherboard's data
paths or bus and the computer's disk storage devices. The IDE interface is based on the IBM PC Industry Standard
Architecture (ISA) 16-bit bus standard, but it is also used in computers that use other bus standards. IDE was
adopted as a standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in November 1990. The ANSI name for
IDE is Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), and the ATA standard is one of several related standards maintained
by the T10 Committee. In today's computers, the IDE controller is often built into the motherboard. Prior to the IDE
drive, controllers were separate external devices so IDE reduced problems associated with storage devices and
integrated controllers.

Result

Familiarised with various add on cards.

IDE Card
AGP Card

VGA Card
Network Card
Experiment No.: 3

Assembling a Desktop PC

Aim : To Assemble a Desktop PC

Steps

Prepare the computer case

Open case

Mount Power Supply (SMPS)

Mount base screws

Open expansion slots

Prepare and mount the motherboard

Mount CPU and CPU cooler

Mount memory modules
Mount motherboard onto case
Connect power supply
Mount the drives

Mount hard drive

Mount CD/DVD Drive

Connect the drives and motherboard

Connect the power supply and data cable (SATA/ IDE) to the hard drive

Connect the power supply and data cable (SATA/ IDE) to the CD/DVD drive

Mount video and other add-on cards if available.

Mount video card

Mount sound card

Mount FAX/data modem

Front panel connection

Connect the Power Switch, Power LED, Reset Switch, HDD LED, Front panel USB, Front panel audio
properly if available

Testing and getting ready for operating system

Power-on for the first time

Clock speed and memory counting

Change BIOS

Result : Assembled a Desktop PC Successfully.

 Installation of Windows 7
No : 4
Windows 7 is an Operating System developed by Microsoft. It is available in the following flavors.
All these flavors except Starter are available in 64bit also.
1. Windows 7 Starter
2. Windows 7 Home
3. Windows 7 Home Premium
4. Windows 7 Professional
5. Windows 7 Enterprise
6. Windows 7 Ultimate

The minimum requirements for installing Windows 7 are

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Aim : To install Windows 7 Ultimate in a new system.

Procedure

Clean Install using a Disc. (DVD)

A clean install is intended for users who want to freshly install Windows on their computer
(by deleting all of the data on the hard disk and then installing Windows) or computers that do not
have an operating system yet.
Steps for the installation.

1. Enter computer's BIOS. Turn on the computer in which Windows 7 is to be installed. When
the BIOS screen appears or when prompted to do so, press Del , Esc , F2 , F10 , or F9 (depending on
the computers motherboard) to enter the system BIOS. The key to enter the BIOS is usually shown
on the screen.
2. Find BIOS's boot options menu. The boot options menu of the BIOS may vary in location
or name from the illustration.

3. Select the CD-ROM/ DVD drive as the first boot device of computer.
Although this method may vary among computers, the boot options menu is typically a
menu of movable device names where to set the CD-ROM drive as the first boot device. It can
also be a list of devices for which the boot order can be set.
4. Save the changes of the settings. Press the button indicated on the screen or select the
save option from the BIOS menu to save the configuration.
5. Insert the Windows 7 disc into the disc drive.
6. Start computer from the disc. After placing the disc into the disc drive, start the computer.
When the computer starts, press a key if it is asked. After choosing to start from the disc, Windows
Setup will begin loading.
7. Choose Windows Setup options. Once Windows Setup loads, a window to select preferred
language, keyboard type, and time/currency format will be shown, Select appropriate options, then
click Next.
8. Accept the License Terms. Read over the Microsoft Software License Terms, check I accept
the license terms, and click Next.
9. Select the Custom installation.
10. Decide the hard drive and partition in which Windows is to be installed. A hard drive is
a physical part of the computer that stores data, and partitions "divide" hard drives into separate
parts.
If the hard drive has data on it, delete the data off of it, or format it.
Select the hard drive from the list of hard drives.
Click Drive options (advanced).
Click Format from Drive options.
If the computer doesn't have any partitions yet, create one to install Windows on it.
Select the hard drive from the list of hard drives.
Click Drive options (advanced).
Select New from Drive options.
Select the size, and click OK.
11. Provide the product key obtained with the installation DVD.
12. Give a suitable name for the System.
13. Provide a secure password for the system.
14. Set the network type.
If the computer is connected to a personal network, choose Home network.
If it is connected to the network at workplace, choose Work network.
If it is connected to a public network from places such as restaurants and shops, choose
Public network.
15. Select the appropriate update settings to update Windows.

Result.

Windows 7 Ultimate is installed successfully.

 Installation of Ubuntu
No :5
Ubuntu is a Linux based OS which is freely available. It can be downloaded from Internet free of cost.
Minimum System Requirements :
1. 1 GHz processor (for example Intel Celeron) or better.
2 1.5 GB RAM (system memory).
3 7 GB of free hard drive space for installation.
4 Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media.
5 Internet access is helpful (for installing updates during the installation process).

Aim
To install Ubuntu OS in a system.
Procedure.
Download Ubuntu 14.10 from the Internet & burn the obtained ISO image into a CD/DVD
using any burning software.
Step 1
Put the CD on the CD ROM drive, change the boot sequence accordingly, so that CD ROM can
boot first.
Step 2
Select the Language and press Enter.
Step 3
Select Install Ubuntu. Starting screen will be appeared and will disappear soon. Click
forward on the Welcome screen. Again Click Forward on Preparing to install Ubuntu screen.

Step 4
Next is the installation type. Since the installation is on the fresh HDD, so got only two option
in the installation type. Depending upon the other OS on the HDD, more options will be available.
Choose any one method. The options are,
1. Erase disk and install Ubuntu (i.e. it will format the entire drive and install the OS).

Once continue is clicked, it will be asked to confirm the auto partitioning. Click on continue to
proceed.
2. Something else (i.e. manually create the partition and install Ubuntu on selected partition), This
advanced mode is used if we are comfortable in manually partitioning the drives. Click on continue.
Partition scheme will be like below: (Let the size of partition be 20GB)
/boot 100MB
swap 2048MB
/ Remaning (19GB)
Select free space and click on + sign at the bottom to create partitions. Following shows for /boot
partition. For swap partition, make sure selected use as swap area. Review the partitions and click
on install now. Confirm the partition scheme.
Step 5
Select our location.
Step 6
Select keyboard layout. If it is not sure, use the Detect Keyboard Layout option and the selection
can be tested by typing in the test text box.

Step 7
In the final screen, it will be asked to enter information about the first user that is going to be
created on the system. Enter related information in this screen.
If the Log in automatically is selected, it will never ask password for authentication while you
trying to log in to Ubuntu System. Give a very secure password for the installation. Ubuntu
will inform whether the password is secure or not.
If Encrypt my home folder is selected, it will make all the files and folders in the home folder more
secure from unauthorized viewing if there are multiple users using the computer. If it is not
sure, leave this box unchecked. Once the above steps are done, click on continue.
Step 8.
If there are more than one operating system in the machine, a boot loader program is to be
installed. Usually, GRUB is the boot loader installed along with Linux distributions. If it is installed,
option to select Operating system will be displayed at startup. So GRUB is to be installed along with
Linux if there is some other OS like Windows.

Result.
Ubuntu is installed successfully.
No : 6

Crimping

Aim : To crimp RJ 45 connector & Cat 5 cables.

RJ-45 connectors are normally used in telephone and network cables. Occasionally they are used for serial
network connections. Today there are 2 different RJ-45 connector sizes available, one type for Cat 5 cable and
second type for Cat 6 cable. The user has to make sure they have the one suited to their job. The easiest way
to recognise them is to compare them side by side. The Cat 6 connector is larger than the Cat 5 connector.

Steps:

1. Measure and cut the required length of cable according to the need.

2. Strip one to two inches (2.5 to 5.1 cm) of the outer skin at the end of the cable wire by making a shallow cut
in the skin with a utility knife. Run the knife around the cable, and the jacket should slide off easily. There will
be 4 pairs of twisted wires exposed, each of them a different color or color combination.

Orange-white striped and solid orange

Green-white striped and solid green

Blue-white striped and solid blue

Brown-white striped and solid brown

3. Fold each pair of wires backwards to expose the core of the cable.

4. Cut off the core and discard.

5. Straighten the twisted wires using 2 pair of tweezers. Grasp a wire beneath a bend with 1 pair of tweezers,
and use the other pair to gently straighten the bend. Straighter the wires, easier the job will be.

6. Arrange the untwisted wires in a row, placing them into the position, and running from right to left, in which
they will go into the RJ-45 connector:

1. Orange with a white stripe

2. Orange
3. Green with a white stripe
4. Blue
5. Blue with a white strip
6. Green
7. Brown with a white stripe
8. Brown
7. Trim the untwisted wires to a suitable length by holding the RJ-45 connector next to the wires. The
insulation on the cable should be just inside the bottom of the RJ-45 connector. The wires should be trimmed
so that they line up evenly with the top of the RJ-45 connector.

Trim the wires in small increments, checking frequently to ensure a correct fit. It's better to cut the untwisted
wires a few times than have to go back and start all over again because you trimmed off too much.

8. Insert the wires into the RJ-45 connector, making sure that they stay aligned and each color goes into its
appropriate channel. Make sure that each wire goes all the way to the top of the RJ-45 connector. If these
checks are not made, the newly crimped RJ-45 connector will be useless.
9. Use the crimping tool to crimp the RJ-45 connector to the cable by pressing the jacket and cable into the
connector so that the wedge at the bottom of the connector is pressed into the jacket. Recrimp the cable once
more to ensure proper connection.

10. Follow the instructions above to crimp an RJ-45 connector to the opposite end of the cable.

11. Use a cable tester to assure that the cable is working properly when both ends are crimped.

There are basically two crimping types.

1. A straight through cable, which is used to connect different devices. Examples are connection between
a hub and a switch, Router and computer, hub and computer.
2. A cross over cable, which is used to operate in a peer-to-peer fashion without a hub/switch.
1. Straight-Through Crimping Color Codes (Both Ends are Same)

1. White/Green
2. Green
3. White/Orange
4. Blue
5. White/Blue
6. Orange
7. White/Brown
8. Brown
2. Crossover Cable Crimping Color Codes (Both Ends are Opposite)

First End Color Code:

1. Orange/White
2. Orange
3. Green/White
4. Blue
5. Blue/White
6. Green
7. Brown/White
8. Brown
Second End Color Codes

1. Green/White
2. Green
3. Orange/White
4. Brown/White
5. Brown
6. Orange
7. Blue
8. Blue/White
Result: Performed both straight through and crossover crimping & tested the connection.
Cross over Straight Through