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Miscellaneous:
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Older Motherboard

Below is a picture of an older motherboard which features some older technology.

This motherboard does not support SATA and instead uses the older IDE (PATA) for connecting hard drives and optical drives. It also has a Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) connector. Although it has the standard PCI expansion slots, it also has the older AGP slot for a single Graphics Card.

The rear panel sockets include the older Serial ports (communications), and Parallel port (printers etc) which have now been replaced by the USB ports on a modern computer.

You may also come across a motherboard which has a mixture of the new and older technologies such as having SATA and IDE (PATA) connectors.


Older ATX Motherboard (QDI P2PE/800 Pro)
Older ATX Motherboard (QDI P2PE/800 Pro).


Above is a picture of an older ATX motherboard which has a Socket 478 that supports an Intel Pentium 4 processor. There are two DIMM slots which support up to 1GB DDR SDRAM. Expansion ports include five PCI slots, and an AGP slot for an older type Graphics Card. There are two IDE (PATA) connectors which support up to four hard drives and optical drives, and an FDD connector for connecting an old Floppy Disk Drive. This motherboard also has built-in Audio, and Network capability.


Older ATX Motherboard Rear Panel Ports (QDI P2PE/800 Pro)
Older ATX Motherboard Rear Panel Ports(QDI P2PE/800 Pro).


The rear panel ports of this motherboard include a PS/2 port (mauve for a keyboard), a PS/2 port (green for a mouse), an old Parallel port (printers etc), two old Serial ports (communications), four standard USB ports, an RJ-45 port for connecting to a network (Broadband router or Hub/Switch), and ports for Audio I/O for the motherboard's in-built audio capability. The Audio ports include Speakers (green), Microphone (Pink), and Audio Input (blue).

This motherboard would not be suitable for running the latest 3D games but it is still capable of general computer use like surfing the web, e-mail, word-processing, spreadsheets etc.