expansion board


A printed circuit board that you can insert into a computer to give it added capabilities. For example, all of the following are expansion boards:
video adapters

graphics accelerators

sound cards

accelerator boards

internal modems

Expansion boards for PCs can be half-size (also half-length) or full-size (also full-length). Most PCs have slots for each type of board. A half-size board is sometimes called an 8-bit board because it can transmit only 8 bits at a time. A full-size board is called a 16-bit board. In addition, some expansion boards are designed to operate with a local bus, such as PCI.

Expansion boards are also called adapters, cards , add-ins , and add-ons.

Read Also:

  • expansion bus

    A collection of wires and protocols that allows the expansion of a computer by inserting printed circuit boards (expansion boards). Traditionally, PCs have utilized an expansion bus called the ISA bus. In recent years, however, the ISA bus has become a bottleneck, so nearly all new PCs have a PCI bus for performance as well […]

  • Expansion Slot

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