Expansion card

The expansion card (also expansion board, adapter card or accessory card) in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot on a computer motherboard, backplane or riser card to add functionality to a computer system via the expansion bus. An expansion bus is a computer bus which moves information between the internal hardware of a computer processor system (including the CPU and RAM) and peripheral devices. It is a collection of wires and protocols that allows for the expansion of a computer.

The primary purpose of an expansion card is to provide or expand on features not offered by the motherboard. For example, the original IBM PC did not provide graphics or hard drive capability. In that case, a graphics card and an ST-506 hard disk controller card provided graphics capability and hard drive interface respectively. Some single-board computers made no provision for expansion cards, and may only have provided IC sockets on the board for limited changes or customization. Since reliable multi-pin connectors are relatively costly, some massmarket systems such as home computers had no expansion slots and instead used a card-edge connector at the edge of the main board, putting the costly matching socket into the cost of the peripheral device. In the case of expansion of on-board capability, a motherboard may provide a single serial RS232 port or Ethernet port. An expansion card can be installed to offer multiple RS232 ports or multiple and higher bandwidth Ethernet ports. In this case, the motherboard provides basic functionality but the expansion card offers additional or enhanced ports.

Expansion slot standards

Main articles: List of computer bus interfaces, List of device bit rates#Computer buses, and Expansion slots

PCI Express

AGP PCI ISA MCA VLB CardBus/PC card/PCMCIA (for notebook computers) ExpressCard (for notebook computers) CompactFlash (for handheld computers and high speed cameras and camcorders) SBus (1990s SPARC-based Sun computers) Zorro (Commodore Amiga) NuBus (Apple Macintosh)

Expansion card types

Video cards AMR Advanced Multi Rate Codec Sound cards Network cards TV tuner cards Modems Host adapters such as SCSI and RAID controllers. POST cards BIOS Expansion ROM cards Compatibility card (legacy) Physics cards. (becoming obsolete as they are integrated into video cards) Disk controller cards (for fixed- or removable-media drives) Interface adapter cards, including parallel port cards, serial port cards, multi-I/O cards, USB port cards, and proprietary interface cards. RAM disks, e.g. i-RAM Solid-state drive Memory expansion cards (legacy) Hard disk cards (legacy) Clock/calendar cards (legacy) Security device cards Radio tuner cards

A video card (also called a video adapter, display card, graphics card, graphics board, display adapter or graphics adapter) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Video hardware can be integrated into the motherboard or (as with more recent designs) the CPU, but all modern motherboards (and some from the 1980s) provide expansion ports to which a video card can be connected

Motherboard via one of:

ISA MCA VLB PCI AGP PCI-X PCI Express Others

Connects to Display via one of:

VGA connector Digital Visual Interface Composite video S-Video Component video HDMI DMS-59 DisplayPort Others

A modern video card consists of a printed circuit board on which the components are mounted. These include:
Graphics Processing Unit Main article: graphics processing unit

A graphics processing unit (GPU), also occasionally called visual processing unit (VPU), is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display. A video card is also a computer unto itself.

Sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware inside the PC. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation, education and entertainment (games) and video projection. Sound functionality can also be integrated onto the motherboard, using basically the same components as a plug-in card. The best plug-in cards, which use better and more expensive components, can achieve higher quality than integrated sound. The integrated sound system is often still referred to as a "sound card".

A network interface controller (NIC) (also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network.[1] Early network interface controllers were commonly implemented on expansion cards that plugged into a computer bus; the low cost and ubiquity of the Ethernet standard means that most newer computers have a network interface built into the motherboard.

Purpose
The network controller implements the electronic circuitry required to communicate using a specific physical layer and data link layer standard such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi or Token Ring. This provides a base for a full network protocol stack, allowing communication among small groups of computers on the same LAN and large-scale network communications through routable protocols, such as IP A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used with any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. The most familiar example is a voice band modem that turns the digital data of a personal computer into modulated electrical signals in the voice frequency range of a telephone channel. These signals can be transmitted over telephone lines and demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given unit of time, usually expressed in bits per second (bit/s, or bps), or bytes per second (B/s). Modems can alternatively be classified by their symbol rate, measured in baud. The baud unit denotes symbols per second, or the number of times per second the modem sends a new signal. For example, the ITU V.21 standard used audio frequency shift keying with two possible frequencies corresponding to two distinct symbols (or one bit per symbol), to carry 300 bits per second using 300 baud. By contrast, the original ITU V.22 standard, which could transmit and receive four distinct symbols (two bits per symbol), handled 1,200 bit/s by sending 600 symbols per second (600 baud) using phase shift keying. A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used with any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. The most familiar example is a voice band modem that turns the digital data of a personal computer into modulated electrical signals in the voice frequency range of a telephone channel. These signals can be transmitted over telephone lines and demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data. Modems are generally classified by the amount of data they can send in a given unit of time, usually expressed in bits per second (bit/s, or bps), or bytes per second (B/s). Modems can alternatively be classified by their symbol rate, measured in baud. The baud unit denotes symbols per second, or the number of times per second the modem sends a new signal. For example, the ITU V.21 standard used audio frequency shift keying with two possible frequencies corresponding to two distinct symbols (or one bit per symbol), to carry 300 bits per second using 300 baud. By contrast, the original ITU V.22 standard, which could transmit and receive four distinct symbols (two bits per symbol), handled 1,200 bit/s by sending 600 symbols per second (600 baud) using phase shift keying.

POST CARDS

At a minimum, if the CPU, BIOS, and the I/O interface upon which the POST card relies are all working, a POST card can be used to monitor the system's Power-On Self Test (POST), or to diagnose problems with it. The system sends two-hexadecimal-digit codes to a specified I/O port (usually 80 hex) during startup, some indicating a stage in the startup procedure, others identifying errors. The description for each code must be looked up in a table for the particular BIOS. For example, for the 1984 IBM PC/AT code 1D is issued when about to Determine Memory Size Above 1024K, and code 2D in the event of 8042 Keyboard Controller Failure, 105 System Error. If startup does not complete successfully, either an error code, or the code of the last operation, is available. POST cards provide information even when a standard display is not available, either because connecting a monitor is impractical, or because the failure occurs before the video subsystem is operational.

Audio/Video Configuration Tab

The Audio/Video Configuration tab provides several audio and video configuration controls. It is only present if a System 5 IP or one of its control ports is selected in the IP Link Tree window. Details on the following controls are provided below:

Refresh Reset Audio Settings Enable MPS 112 VGA / Audio Input S-Video / Audio Input Video / Audio Input Audio Input Global Audio Configuration Video Input Configuration RGB Delay Balance Audio Mute Output Mode

Refresh
The Refresh button retrieves current data from the selected device and repopulates the fields in this screen to match the current device settings.

Enable MPS 112

The Enable MPS 112 checkbox turns on the S-Video / Audio Input, Video / Audio Input, and Audio Input gain controls. It The Reset Audio Settings button resets the device's also adds the MPS 112 faceplate in the audio settings to their factory default condition. Front Panel tab. For more information, see Enable MPS 112 in the Front Panel Tab section of this help file.

Reset Audio Settings

VGA / Audio Input Sets the gain level for the audio inputs associated with each of the five VGA inputs of the System 5 IP Switcher.

S-Video / Audio Input The MPS 112 Media Presentation Switcher must be enabled for the S-Video / Audio Input gain level controls to be active. Sets the gain level for the audio inputs associated with each of the four S-Video inputs of the MPS 112.

Video / Audio Input

The MPS 112 Media Presentation Switcher must be enabled for the Video / Audio Input gain level controls to be active. Sets the gain level for the audio inputs associated with each of the four Video inputs of the MPS 112.

audio Input
The MPS 112 Media Presentation Switcher must be enabled for the Audio Input gain level controls to be active. Sets the gain level for the two audio inputs of the

MPS 112.

Global Audio Configuration Provides Volume, Bass, and Treble controls that affect all of the selected device's audio channels. The Power Amp Limit provides a control setting to limit the audio amplifier to prevent overdriving and shutting down the power supply. Video Input Configuration Input ports 1 and 2 on the System 5 IP are capable of accepting either RGB (3 or 5 wire) or composite video (1 wire) or S-Video (1 wire) inputs. Use this screen to identify which type of input is present on ports 1 and 2 of the System 5 IP Switcher. RGB Delay (aka Triple-Action Switching) Triple-Action Switching is when the RGB input signal is muted during switching until the projector has time to sync up to the new image. This prevents viewers from seeing a scrambled image that may occur during switching. Viewers will instead see a blank screen for the duration of the RGB Delay setting. The RGB Delay options are 0 to 5 seconds in 0.5second increments. Balance Sets the left/right audio balance. Audio Mute Turns the Audio Mute function on or off. Output Mode Sets the audio output options:

Stereo or Mono , Unbalanced or Balanced