Daughterboard
Encyclopedia
A daughterboard, daughtercard or piggyback board is a circuit board meant to be an extension or "daughter" of a motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...

 (or 'mainboard'), or occasionally of another card. In particular, daughterboards often have plugs, sockets
Jack (connector)
In electronics and electrical assemblies, the term jack commonly refers to a surface-mounted connector, often, but not always, with the female electrical contact or socket, and is the "more fixed" connector of a connector pair...

, pins, connectors
Electrical connector
An electrical connector is an electro-mechanical device for joining electrical circuits as an interface using a mechanical assembly. The connection may be temporary, as for portable equipment, require a tool for assembly and removal, or serve as a permanent electrical joint between two wires or...

, or other attachments for other boards, which is what differentiates them from a standard expansion board such as for PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...

 or ISA
Industry Standard Architecture
Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor...

. In addition, daughterboards usually have only internal connections
Electrical connector
An electrical connector is an electro-mechanical device for joining electrical circuits as an interface using a mechanical assembly. The connection may be temporary, as for portable equipment, require a tool for assembly and removal, or serve as a permanent electrical joint between two wires or...

 within a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 or other electronic
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...

 device
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...

 rather than any external ones, and usually access the motherboard directly rather than through a computer bus
Computer bus
In computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers.Early computer buses were literally parallel electrical wires with multiple connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the same...

.

Daughterboards are sometimes used in computers in order to allow for expansion card
Expansion card
The expansion card in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an expansion slot of a computer motherboard or backplane to add functionality to a computer system via the expansion bus.One edge of the expansion card holds the contacts that fit exactly into the slot...

s to fit on their side (or upright), parallel
Parallel (geometry)
Parallelism is a term in geometry and in everyday life that refers to a property in Euclidean space of two or more lines or planes, or a combination of these. The assumed existence and properties of parallel lines are the basis of Euclid's parallel postulate. Two lines in a plane that do not...

 to the motherboard, usually to maintain a small or slim form factor. In this case they can also be called riser card
Riser card
A riser card is a printed circuit board that picks up a multitude of signal lines via a single connector on a mainboard and distributes them via dedicated connectors on the card....

s, or risers. Daughterboards are also sometimes used to expand the basic functionality of an electronic device, such as when a certain model has features added to it and is released as a new or separate model. Rather than redesign the first model completely, a daughterboard may be added to a special port
Computer port (hardware)
In computer hardware, a port serves as an interface between the computer and other computers or peripheral devices. Physically, a port is a specialized outlet on a piece of equipment to which a plug or cable connects...

 or connector on the motherboard or mainboard. These usually fit on top of and parallel to the board, separated by spacer
Spacer
Spacer may refer to:* Spacer , in Isaac Asimov's Robot Series* Rebar spacer, in concrete construction* Spacer, alias for flesh tunnel, a type of body piercing* Spacer, element in HTML Webpage designIn science and medicine:...

s or standoffs, and are therefore sometimes called mezzanine cards due to being stacked like the mezzanine
Mezzanine (architecture)
In architecture, a mezzanine or entresol is an intermediate floor between main floors of a building, and therefore typically not counted among the overall floors of a building. Often, a mezzanine is low-ceilinged and projects in the form of a balcony. The term is also used for the lowest balcony in...

 of a theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

. Wavetable cards are often mounted on sound card
Sound card
A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...

s in this manner.

Use of the names daughter card and daughter board, and even mezzanine board are also acceptable.

Types

  • Enhanced Graphics Adapter
    Enhanced Graphics Adapter
    The Enhanced Graphics Adapter is the IBM PC computer display standard specification which is between CGA and VGA in terms of color and space resolution. Introduced in October 1984 by IBM shortly after its new PC/AT, EGA produces a display of 16 simultaneous colors from a palette of 64 at a...

     piggyback board, adds memory beyond 64 KB, up to 256 KB
  • Expanded memory
    Expanded memory
    In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching introduced April 24, 1985 that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory. Expanded memory uses parts of the address space normally dedicated to communication with peripherals for program...

     piggyback board, adds additional memory to some EMS and EEMS boards
  • ADD daughterboard
  • RAID daughterboard
  • 10/100Base-T Ethernet daughterboard
  • CPU Socket daughterboard
  • Bluetooth daughterboard
  • Modem daughterboard
  • AD/DA/DIO daughter-card
  • Communication daughterboard (CDC)
  • Server Management daughterboard (SMDC)
  • Serial ATA connector daughterboard
  • Robotic daughterboard
  • Access control List daughterboard

See also

  • Creative Wave Blaster
    Creative Wave Blaster
    The Wave Blaster was an add-on MIDI-synthesizer for Creative Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE32, and AWE64 family of PC soundcards. It was a sample-based synthesis General MIDI compliant synthesizer...

  • M-Module
    M-Module
    M-Modules are a mezzanine standard mainly used in industrial computers. Being mezzanines, they are always plugged on a carrier PCB that supports this format...

    , an industrial mezzanine standard for modular I/O
  • PowerUP
    PowerUP (accelerator)
    PowerUP boards were dual-processor 68k–PowerPC accelerator boards designed by Phase5 Digital Products for Amiga computers. They had two different processors working in parallel, sharing the complete address space of the Amiga computer system.-History:...

     accelerators, CPU and memory daughterboard for Amiga systems
  • Riser card
    Riser card
    A riser card is a printed circuit board that picks up a multitude of signal lines via a single connector on a mainboard and distributes them via dedicated connectors on the card....

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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