Summary of "Vocabulary for hardware" question

[Rahel Bailie <rbailie -at- CASTLETON -dot- COM>]

A while back, I asked: is there a recognized term to describe a physical
area or section of a motherboard or master processor board? and got
these suggestions:

(1) subcircuit, i.e. "Select IOCFG to configure the I/O subcircuit of
the system board."

(2) "... boards are generally divided into the analog and digital
sections.  Remember, most hardware has to perform both analog-to-digital
conversion (ADC) and digital-to-analog conversion (DAC).  Circuitry in
both sections of the board will include dedicated ADC/DAC and DAC/ADC
functions, usually sharing a microprocessor as a common device interface
between the digital and analog subsystems."

(3) "Perhaps your readers don't need to know more than that each port is
related
to a certain functionality. When they configure the port and use the
port,
they are working to achieve a level of functionality, and are not
concerned
with a physical location on a board. I use my computer all day long with
nary a thought about the boards inside that box."

(4) "Santa would go directly to the elves if he had a question about the
toys being produced. Go with your engineers."

Thanks to Richard Mateosian, George Mena, Doug Parr, and William Swallow
for their suggestions.

Because the last 15 chapters of the book are devoted to telling
technicians how to configure the functionality connected to these
physical sections of the board, I've opted for a variation on #3 above,
that is, make it clear that configuring the functionality on a certain
part of the board is done through a port, and from thereon, talk about
configuring the ports.

-------------------------------------------------
Rahel A. Bailie
Vancouver, BC
Tel 604-293-0039 (5432) / Fax 604-293-0047

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