Thursday, 1 December 2011

Talking to the keyboard


Talking to the keyboard
The keyboard provides a great example of how the buses and support programming help the CPU get the job done. In early computers, the keyboard connected to the external data bus via a special chip known as the known as the keyboard controller. Don’t bother looking for this chip on your motherboard- the Southbridge now handles keyboard controller functions. The way the keyboard controller-or technically, the keyboard controller circuitry-works with the CPU, however, has changed only a small amount the past 20+years, making it a perfect tool to illustrate how the CPU talk to a device.

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