computer hardware and software

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor(CMOS) is a small portion of battery powered memory on the motherboard that contains system settings like types of drives, device types in the system, which drive to start up from etc. The battery used is a 3volt battery. CMOS and BIOS are often interchanged although they are different things. Think of the BIOS as the skeleton frame upon which the CMOS settings hang. All computer memory forgets everything it holds when power to it is shut off. If the power was totally shut off to your CMOS, your computer would forget its start up settings, and you’d have to re-enter these settings every time you started your computer! Fortunately this is not the case as your CMOS always receives enough power to remember its settings, even when your computer is off. How? It is powered by a small lithium battery on your motherboard. Lithium batteries are designed to last years, and often outlive the usefulness of the computer they reside in. If you keep a computer l...

In this basic motherboard troubleshooting tutorial, you will learn about system board configurations, ROM BIOS troubleshooting, basic hardware components, physical memory and basic configuration errors and system memory basics. This motherboard configuration and microprocessor troubleshooting tutorial help you identify the basic system board problems. There are many replacable components on a mother or system board such as RAM, ROM, CMOS battery and ROM BIOS . If any of these components functions improperly, you can replace the faulty components with the new components. The Microprocessor and the ROM BIOS are the two major components that are responsible for the problems that are generated for the system board. While proceeding with the troubleshooting, you should from the Microprocessor and the ROM BIOS. There are a large number of the hardware failure symptoms that are associated with the system board. Typical symptoms associated with system board failure are the following. 1. The s...