SE440BX Motherboard Product Guide
11
Input/Output (I/O) Controller
The I/O controller handles the exchange of information between the processor and external devices
like the mouse and keyboard or a printer that are connected to the computer. The controller
features the following:
• Integrated keyboard and mouse controller
• Industry standard diskette drive controller
• One multimode bi-directional parallel port
Standard mode: Centronics-compatible operation
High speed mode: support for enhanced capabilities port (ECP) and enhanced parallel port
(EPP)
• Two serial ports
• Flexible IRQ and DMA mapping for Windows† 95
Real-Time Clock
The motherboard has a time-of-day clock and 100-year calendar that will rollover to 2000 at the
turn of the century. A battery on the motherboard keeps the clock current when the computer is
turned off.
✏NOTE
The recommended method of accessing the date in systems with Intel motherboards is indirectly
from the Real-Time Clock (RTC) via the BIOS. The BIOS on Intel motherboards and baseboards
contains a century checking and maintenance feature that checks the least two significant digits of
the year stored in the RTC during each BIOS request (INT 1Ah) to read the date and, if less than
80 (i.e., 1980 is the first year supported by the PC), updates the century byte to 20. This feature
enables operating systems and applications using the BIOS date/time services to reliably
manipulate the year as a four-digit value.
For more information on proper date access in systems with Intel motherboards please see
http://support.intel.com/support/year2000/paper.htm
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Support
The motherboard has two USB ports. You can connect two USB peripheral devices directly to the
computer without an external hub. To attach more than two devices, connect an external hub to
either of the built-in ports. The motherboard supports the standard universal host controller
interface (UHCI) and takes advantage of standard software drivers written to be compatible with
UHCI. The USB features the following:
• Support for hot swapping Plug and Play devices
• Support for self-identifying peripherals