CertiGuide to A+ (Core Hardware)  9  Chapter 0001:  Power Supplies - System Board

XIII  AGP 1 XV  Demanding Attention Digitally

The Audio/Modem Riser (AMR) is another Intel innovation. This little slot can be used to give the end user an inexpensive solution for sound and modem functions. Physically partitioning the analog portion to the riser card, and putting the digital functions on a chip set achieves this.

This solution lowers costs, however it consumes CPU time. Sometimes these modems are referred to as software-based modems. Software-based modems are acceptable for computers that have CPU time idling, and are not recommended by your authors for servers or other computers doing resource intensive work.

Many of the parts and pieces of a computer have been laid out here. The question arises, how do all of them work together in a logical order? It has been said that time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. This is true in a computer as well.

A computer can get really busy doing what you told it to do. And as we have seen, this collection of spare parts flying in close formation is a bunch of simple sub-systems tied together to make a single more complex system.

The way all the sub-systems keep from colliding into a hopeless mess is by interruption.

XIII  AGP 1 XV  Demanding Attention Digitally