Jumpers On A Motherboard
| Field | PC Building |
| Went Obsolete | Around 2000 |
| Made Obsolete By | “Jumperless” BIOS |
| Knowledge Assumed | How to use tweezers |
| When useful | Working on old hardware |
When a new CPU, memory, or other devices were added to a system there was always some jumper that had to be changed to let the computer know exactly what was installed in the system. Anything from defining IRQ settings for PCI slots to the processors speed. As time went on the hardware that a PC could automatically detect and adapt to increased and the amount of jumpers to set decreased. Other settings became possible to set using the keyboard by tinkering in the BIOS and eventually even the BIOS reset became available there. Current systems still have a few jumpers, though you are unlikely to ever use them.
Some “enthusiast” motherboards still include some jumpers for overclocking.
CMOS Reset and other things on the mobo still use jumpers. So do many professional electronic devices, ie PLCS. They too have motherboards.
SCSI hard drives utilize jumpers to for their device ID.
