Getting to know your ATX motherboard is helpful

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Think of your PC as a perfectly organized and well-managed city. There is the town hall, the marketplaces, the harbor and airport, the highways and the toll roads, the bridges, the electrical power distribution networks, the telephone networks, the people and their goods.

The town hall is perhaps comparable to the central processor that keeps everything working. The houses, apartments and warehouses are the various storage devices your PC has, including the hard disk, the CD-ROM, the tape backup, the Jaz drive, and the floppy diskettes. The cars as well as the people and the goods they carry are all the data signals that travel from one component of your PC to another. The harbor, the airport, the interstate freeways are the input-output gates of your PC. These include the connection to your mouse, your keyboard, your joystick, your printer, your monitor, your modem, even the video camera you're using for video-conferencing. The marketplaces are the various microprocessors that your PC has. Like the markets, these small electronic brains handle various types of transactions that keep the system working.

What's so interesting about comparing a PC to a city? Well, to date there is no such thing as a city in the sky or a city that floats on the ocean, although they could be future possibilities. In reality, all we can build are cities on large tracts of land. It is on this land that we build the components of the city I mentioned: the town hall, the marketplaces and the streets.

Motherboard

Now, which part of a PC serves more or less the same functions as this large area of land? It's the motherboard. Also called the main board, it's a piece of hardware that provides the most basic connections to all the other components in a PC. Because of the vital functions it has to perform, it's no surprise that different motherboards can give different levels of performance even if we use the same Pentium processor. The fact is that some motherboards have a more efficient design than others.

With courtesy of PT Intel Indonesia, I was able to have a close look at the VS440FX motherboard for the Pentium Pro. I hadn't been able to test drive this board before as I still haven't invested in a Pentium Pro processor and an ATX-specific casing.

Intel does not pretend that their motherboards are the best on the market. In fact, you can find better and faster Taiwanese motherboards at comparable prices. One of the most popular brands in Glodok, West Jakarta, is Asustek, made by Asus -- the biggest motherboard-maker in Taiwan. Intel continuously tests motherboards on the market and they have a list of the ones they've certified for compatibility with their processors. You can ask a genuine Intel dealer in Glodok whether the motherboard they are trying to sell you has been tested and certified by Intel. Though for obvious reasons, Intel unfortunately cannot release this list to end users.

This time, we will explore the features of this motherboard together just to get an idea of what we should look for when choosing our next motherboard.

The parts

Intel specified the ATX form factor more than a year ago. Today the standard has been accepted by the industry and you can find ATX motherboards from Taiwan.

Every motherboard has a socket for the processor, whether it is a DX 486, Pentium or Pentium Pro. Unlike in the 1980s when you needed to use a special tool to insert the processor chip, today's motherboard has the so-called "Zero Insertion Force" or ZIF socket. This makes it easy even for end users to change their Pentium processors. You'll usually find a lever on the socket, which you lift up before you can plug in the processor. You press the lever down to keep the chip snug in place.

And then there are the memory sockets. There are two types, the SIMM and the DIMM. The earlier has 72 pins, while the latter has 168 pins. The VS440FX doesn't have the DIMM socket, though.

You will normally choose Windows NT as the operating system when you have a Pentium Pro machine, and in order for Windows NT to run smoothly you may want to put in at least 32 MB of RAM. Because the SIMMs have to be installed in pairs, you'll need two 16-MB SIMMs. This will allow you to add more RAM later on when your budget allows.

Unlike the older types of motherboards, on an ATX one we have the two serial ports and the parallel ports already built in. In addition, there will be two small DIN sockets for both the PS/2 mouse and the keyboard. If you have one of those older AcerMate PCs, you'll know that at the back it also has these ports. However, unlike the ports in an AcerMate, the ports in an ATX motherboard are stacked vertically as can be seen in the accompanying picture.

Because of the different form factor, the built-in ports and two DIN sockets, the ATX requires a different kind of casing. In Glodok, I've seen more and more casings of this type available, and they cost more than the regular ones. Interestingly, this Intel motherboard comes with an input-output shield that covers the back of the casing. The shield's purpose is to minimize electromagnetic interference and to ensure proper air circulation, which is necessary to keep the system as cool as possible.

The connector between the motherboard and the power supply is also different in an ATX system. But, more important than this is that the BIOS should be upgradeable. The BIOS resides in a flash ROM, and you should be able to use a software to rewrite the codes to accommodate new features.

Other features

Other features you should look for in a new motherboard include an infrared connection and a Universal Serial Bus connection. While the earlier is already a common feature, the latter, as the VS440FX shows, is still new and few motherboards have it.

We usually have problems with our PCs because we don't have the necessary documentation on the motherboard. For instance, when fixing a PC that has the password activated can be a headache if we don't know which jumper should be connected to disable the password. Without the password, we cannot access the BIOS Setup program; we're stuck in neutral. Therefore, when buying a motherboard you should choose the one that comes with thorough documentation. Of course, you should not lose the booklet.

Intel's VS440FX comes with a CD ROM that contains its manual. This is a welcomed approach since a CD-ROM is generally much easier to keep. The manual contains detail explanation on what the individual error beep means. Certainly it also contains the information on where the jumper has to be moved to erase the password from CMOS.

Better still, the motherboard's box contains a sticker that you can place inside the casing, so that you can have the information handy the moment you open your system up for service or upgrades.

These are just the most important things to look for when you scourge the stores in Computer City for your next motherboard upgrade.