Who invented the motherboard and what it meant for the pc industry

The motherboard is the central element of our computers and of all electronic products, since it is the component that welcomes all the others so that the set can work. In this short article we look back to its origin to understand its great importance.

The story behind the motherboard

The motherboard is a PCB (printed circuit board) that is the building block of many electronic devices, mainly home computers. Motherboards are also recognized as motherboard, main board, or logic board. Motherboards consist of many important elements of a PC. What can be the main memory, the microprocessor and the microprocessor support chipset, which offers a connection between the central processing unit and additional peripheral elements.

Before the microprocessors were created, computer systems were assembled into mainframes, with gears that were linked by a back panel that had numerous slots for connecting cables. In previous plans, cables were required to connect the pins of the card connector, however, they quickly became a thing of the past with the discovery of printed circuit boards.

To understand the importance of the motherboard, we have to go back to the appearance of the first PC, the IBM 5150, which was unveiled on August 12, 1981. Logically this first computer was much simpler than the ones we all have in our homes today.

The first computers were based on a very simple architecture, and the firmware of the processor included most of the functions that the motherboard performs today. The problem with this was that every time you wanted to change something you had to rewrite the firmware, which made the process very complex and expensive. In this way, if a user wanted to change an item on their PC, the firmware had to be changed for one that contained the information necessary for it to work.

It was not until the late 1980s that the concept of the motherboard as we know them today was created, its creator was the IBM engineer Patty McHugh. IBM baptized this motherboard as Planar, it was a basic model that contained the CPU and RAM. With the appearance of the motherboard, it was much easier to change a component, since it was only necessary to install a new driver, without having to change all the firmware.

With the arrival of the motherboard, users could change the components of their computer in a very simple way, it was only necessary to have a few basic knowledge. Does this movie sound familiar to you?

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In the 1990s it was found that increasing the number of peripheral brackets on the PCB was very cost effective, thus, low speed peripherals such as mice, keyboards, serial ports, etc. were integrated into the motherboards. In the late 1990s, elements related to audio, video, networking, and storage functions began to be included. The functions for graphics cards and 3D games were incorporated somewhat later.

The concept of the motherboard has remained unchanged from its invention to the present, the only difference is that new elements have been added constantly, so that today they are much more complex, but their operation is exactly the same.. Here ends our post on the origin of the motherboard, we hope you liked it.

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