The following photograph shows the typical
peripheral connectors on an ATX motherboard.
In older
computers (with PC, XT, or AT motherboards), the serial port and parallel port
were typically on an expansion card along with two IDE (later called ATA) hard
drive ports and one floppy drive port. These expansion cards were called
multi-I/O or super-I/O cards. With the advent of the ATX motherboard, these
ports were moved to the motherboard supported by a Super-I/O chip. The
PS/2-style mouse and keyboard interfaces (with the six-pin miniature DIN
connectors) were added to ATX motherboards.[1]
The mouse, keyboard, serial
port, and parallel port connectors are obsolete and not used on modern
motherboards. These have all been superseded by USB versions of the devices. The
serial and parallel ports are still supported on many motherboards but exist
only as header connectors (the familiar two-row gold pin connectors used for
many devices). Cables and external connectors must be added to bring these out
of the case. Six or more USB connectors are becoming common. Other connectors
you may find in this cluster are found below.
FireWire
Firewire,
also called IEEE 1394, iLink, i.LINK and Lynx is a high-speed serial bus that
competes with USB and is also a standard audio/visual (A/V) connection
interface. It is available in wired, wireless, fiber optic, and coaxial
versions.
FireWire
The standard six-conductor FireWire
connector is shown above. Still, the wired version may also use a small
four-conductor connector or RJ-45 connector with a Cat-5e cable, making the
cable look like an Ethernet cable.
eSATA
The eSATA socket is for
the external connection of mass storage devices using the SATA (Serial ATA)
protocol. All eSATA devices require external power separate from the eSATA
cable. The cable and connector are more robust, certified for 5000 insertions
and removals compared to SATA, which only has certification for 50. eSATA is
incompatible with SATA.
eSATA Connectors
DVI
Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
was developed as an industry standard to transfer video content. There are
several arrangements of the DVI connector that support single links, dual links,
analog video, USB, etc. DVI-I supports digital and analog links, DVI-D only
supports digital links, and DVI-A only supports analog ones. You can get DVI to
VGA adapters for DVI cards that support analog video.
DVI
Connector Types
DMS-59
DMS-59 (Dual Monitor Solution, 59 pins) provides two DVI or VGA outputs in a
single connector. A split breakout cable is required that has two DVI or VGA
connectors.
A
DMS-59 connector on an expansion card
A DMS-59 connector on an expansion card and DMS-59 to
VGA breakout cable
A
DMS-59 to VGA breakout cable
HDMI
High Definition Media Interface is an
all-in-one solution for computer I/O. The standard calls for DVI video, HD
Audio, and Gigabit Ethernet capabilities in a single cable. It was developed for
'smart' TVs requiring an internet connection, but at least some cables do not
have this capability. The most common use is plugging computer or cable box
video into TVs.
An
HDMI Connector
DisplayPort
DisplayPort is a new video
standard designed to complement HDMI. The video bandwidth has several
high-capacity channels that allow the video stream to daisy-chain through ten
devices and treat each as an independent display.
A
DisplayPort Connector
S/PDIF
The Sony/Phillips Digital Interconnect Format is a data transfer protocol used
for digital audio. There are both electrical and optical ports that use the
S/PDIF protocol. The electrical S/PDIF port is a regular RCA (phono) connector.
It is color-coded yellow, so don't confuse it with composite video.
