This Unit

Resources

Lecture Material

 Activity 4

Buses & Expansion Cards

Student Name____________________________     Date_____________    

Lecturer Witness Statement:  The student named above carried out the following activities and did so safely.    

Activities  ____________                        Signature ____________________

Lesson Plan

Lecture Bus types and expansion slots & cards	30 min
Activity 4.1: Expansion card research task	30 min
Activity 4.2: Research task conclusion	15  min
Break	15 min
Activity 4.3:  IRQ, I/O task	15 min
Practical:  Monitor/vga assign task	45 min
Review notes, ask questions	15 min
Activity 4.3: Quiz	15 min

Document Checklist

The following documents are to be handed in at the end of the lesson.    

Documents	Tick
This document in Word format
Table of AGP/ISA/PCI card properties
Short report on AGP/ISA/PCI card properties
Quiz pages

Activity 4.1     

This activity is to be done in groups of 3 or 4

Imagine you are an assistant at a computer fair stall that sells expansion cards.  Your boss tells you and your fellow assistants that the following week you will have to look after the stall all by yourself.  Moreover, you will be expected to answer technical queries from the public about the expansion cards on sale.

You are all a bit worried about dealing with the technical questions so you have decided to improve your knowledge of expansion cards by carrying out some research.

Your first task as a group is to find out about each card on the Internet. In particular...

	approximately when that slot type was in mainstream use
	how to identify the slot type by looking at the card
	bus width
	data transfer speed
	any advantages of that slot type
	any disadvantages of that slot type
	any other typical expansion cards that will have that slot type

Note: Each group will be supplied with 3 video expansion cards, each with a with different bus type (ISA, PCI, AGP.) 

I would suggest that each group member chooses one card to research and that the information gathered is shared and discussed amongst the group at the end of the task period.

You should use a table of the form below to record the details about each card.

etc......

Activity 4.2

From the previous activity, each individual group member should have gathered information about the expansion card he/she was allocated to research.  

Your next task as a group is to pool your information.  In particular you should...  

	read and understand the information gathered by other members in your group, since you will be questioned later
	discuss the information you have gathered as a group

Each individual must now produce a one page report that

	compares and contrasts the speed and capabilities of the three types of video cards
	compares and contrasts the speed and capabilities of the two types of network cards

Activity 4.3

This activity is to be done in groups of 3 or 4

Check the BIOS of the PC assigned to you in the workshop to...

see if it has a PNP BIOS

__________________

if the resource allocation is handled by the BIOS or by the OS

__________________

Boot the computer into the operating system and find out using device manager or equivalent how the following resources are allocated.

Have any IRQ numbers been allocated to a device more than once?  List them below.

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

 

If IRQ numbers have been allocated more than once, which type of bus do these devices have?

__________________________________________________

Activity 4.4 - Quiz

Log into Blackboard and navigate to Quiz 4.  Answer the questions and record your score below.

Quiz Score  __________________

That's it for this activity!