Bringing It All Together
Connecting to the MB
Let’s connect
everything to the Motherboard
The CMOS should be
set to normal. The location is marked on this board.
Simply plug the
main power supply to the MB. You can’t miss the connection (see
figure 6.1). It’s the biggest connector coming out of the power
unit and can only go in one way.
Next, connect the
IDE ribbon cables we looked at before:
• From
the HDD to IDE1
• From
the CD or DVD to IDE2 and
• The
floppy drive to the FDC.
All
the cables are notched so they only go in one way with the
exception of the floppy drive.
The IDE cable for
the FDD has one end where the ribbon is split. This end goes to
the actual drive. The other end goes to the MB. The power
supplies to the HDD and the CD are the standard 4-pin white
connectors. There are usually 4 of these connectors with an ATX
power supply. They have red, black and yellow wires; the red
faces the IDE. Remember
red-red
and they can only
go in one way!
The connector for
the floppy drive is the smallest flat one that just slides on to
the pins on the FDD. The secondary ATX connector is to feed the
board extra power. Not all boards have these but this one does,
in fact it has two; one is exactly the same as that of the CDROM
and HDD, the other is a small square connector. DO NOT CONNECT
BOTH! One is enough!
That’s the hard
work done. We just need to let the MB know what is connected to
it. We do that in the BIOS.
We must make sure
some settings on the motherboard are correct before we power up.
Check your manual for the CMOS settings. Most MB's have the
default CMOS setting as normal. That’s fine.
If, however, the
default is to clear CMOS and you switch your PC on, it will kill
your MB stone dead!
MAKE SURE THAT YOUR CMOS IS SET TO NORMAL
before you ever
connect the external power-lead! It will be stated clearly in
your manual where the CMOS is and what the default is.
Connecting to external peripherals
On the left of the
MB are the modules for connection to monitor, speakers, printer,
PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, USB. There is also an
RJ45 module for
LAN connection on the board we are using as an example.
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