It is a printed circuit board that is inserted into an expansion slot of a motherboard. The main function of a Expansion Card is to provide the function other than that a motherboard can offer. Below are a few examples of expansion cards.
i) Network card
ii) 3D Card
Network Interface card (NIC)
It is also known as the Network Card. It is a device that allows computers to be joined together via LAN. Using a given and specific protocol, the network computers are able to communicate together. For dial-up Internet user, the telephone line is usually plugged into the slot of the Network Interface Card. All the computers in the computer labs, and cyber cafes joined their computers in a network by using this device.
Plug&Play
It is a system capability developed by Microsoft initially for Windows95, or newer operating systems. It gives its user the ability to plug a device into the computer system and have the computer to recognize that the device is there without having to manually setting the device up. Before the invention of the Plug and Play, users are required to tell the operating system that a particular new device is installed.
Sockets
It is a piece of plastic or metal contacts made for each of the pins in the CPU. It is to physically protect the CPU. It also connects the electrical circuit between all the pins and sockets inside the CPU.
Image of a socket
Chips
It is a small electrical circuit, also known as the intergrated circuit. It is a kind of basic electronic component of all kinds of electronics, especially the computers. The computer chips are made of semiconductors that consist of silicons and other component including the transistors. Today, a computer chip can contain millions of transistors and that help the computer in becoming smaller and more powerful.
Slots
Slots are oftenly called Expansion Slots. They are basically the holes that are used as a place where external devices are plugged into the computer(sound card, video card, etc). These external devices are called expansion boards. The external features being installed can expand the capability of an original computer. Some examples are the USB slot.
Bus Lines
The Bus Lines are the communicating electronic lines that connect different parts of the CPU to various other parts as well as the system board of the computer. The data flows in the form of "Bit" in a bus line. The bus lines are the electronic pathway that decide the rate of transfer of data. The greater the bus lines, the better the efficiency of the computer.
Serial Port
A serial port is a port that can be used for serial communication, where only "1 bit" allowed to be transmitted at a time. A serial port can be used for almost any types of devices including the modem, mouse, and printers. The data is transmitted through the serial ports connected to the computer to the other devices and other various perispherals.
Image of a Serial Port
Parallel Port
It is also known as the Parallel Interface, initially for connecting External devices such as the printer, external hard disc, joystick, which relatively needs a higher bandwidth. The Parallel Port is already being replaced by the USB port and they are no longer needed for printers.
Universal Serial Bus
More oftenly known as the USB. It is an external bus standard that supports data transfer rate of 12Mbps. It is now commonly used for external devices like mouse, printers, laptop coolers,pendrives, etc.
Image of a USB slot and cable
Firewire Port
It is a kind of serial port that is used to transfer data rapidly from one electronic device to another. 1 example is to transfer files from the digital camera or camcorders to the computer. The transfer rate of a Firewire Port can reach up to 400Mbps. The data transfer rate is relatively fast and the quality is also excellent.
Image of a Firewire Port and the cable
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