Hey, I'm relatively new here. But i've been wondering for a while now,

How does a motherboard work?

It's got my head spinning...

 

Have you read 'motherboard' in wikipedia? The answer to your Q is a bit long for a forum to answer, but better suited to helping you understand things that aren't clear from other reading.

 

Moterboards are large multilayer circuit boards with chips, resistors, capacitors, etc. soldered on them with strips of copper for wires. Connectors also soldered on these boards allow other circuit boards to be plugged into the motherboards. This.feature distinguishes motherboards from other circuit boards.

I think motherboards were originally a circuit board with a number of sockets into which the main functional circuit boards were plugged. The motherboard thus supplied interconnections and power rails between these sockets and thus functional boards. But nowadays, a considerable amount of functionality, other than the processor chip, seems to be on the motherboard.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+do+motherboards+work

I think motherboards were originally a circuit board with a number of sockets into which the main functional circuit boards were plugged. The motherboard thus supplied interconnections and power rails between these sockets and thus functional boards. But nowadays, a considerable amount of functionality, other than the processor chip, seems to be on the motherboard.

Yes, back in the IBM 360 era, motherboards had few if any components, except sockets for boards with the circuits.

 

Before that, components were mounted on metal chassis, and wires were soldered to components, and sometimes wires were wrapped around screws on terminal strips. There were other primitive things such as vacuum tubes.

Edited July 17, 201312 yr by EdEarl