(Emphasize your best and favorite subjects. If grades were average, talk about leadership or jobs you took to finance your education. Talk about extra-curricular activities (clubs, sports, volunteer work))

On some system boards, resetting the contents of the CMOS can be accomplished by shorting a special pair of jumpers on the board. With other systems, you will need to remove or short across the backup battery to reset the CMOS information. In ATX systems, it will also be necessary to unplug the power from the commercial outlet to reduce the voltage to the CMOS registers. When the contents of the CMOS are reset, you must manually restore any non-default CMOS settings being used by the system.

SIMM modules were traditionally available in 30-pin and 72-pin versions; DIMMs use larger 168-pin boards.

The Socket 7 specification enabled system boards to be configured for different types of microprocessors using different operating speeds. In older systems, the operating speed of the microprocessor was configured through external settings (that is, jumpers on the motherboard).

If the IDE controller is built in to the system board and becomes defective, it is still possible to install an IDE host adapter card in an expansion slot and use it without replacing the system board. This action can also be taken to upgrade older IDE systems so that they can use additional IDE devices. The onboard IDE controller might need to be disabled before the system will address the new host adapter version.

When the system is upgraded, the BIOS should also be upgraded to support it. In newer system boards, this can be accomplished by flashing (electrically altering) the information in the BIOS with the latest compatibility firmware. Themost recent full non-beta version of the BIOS should be used for this upgrade.