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An expansion bus is made up of electronic pathways which move information from your CPU and RAM to all of your other peripheral devices such as a microphone, monitor, telephone line, and printer, which all connect to ports on the back of your computer. It is a collection of wires and protocols that allows for the expansion of a computer.[1]

To make sense of all of this, let’s look at the example as a whole. Firstly, you use a parallel connector, where you would plug your printer, telephone line, monitor, or microphone into your personal system box. Your expansion card will connect to the expansion bus through the expansion slot. This in turn, may move information along the line through devices such as your RAM or CPU chip.(Cited, Management Information Systems for the Information Age, pg 262)

Historically, computers have used an expansion bus called the ISA bus. However, more recently the PCI bus has been most widely used. Users of the ISA bus had to have in depth knowledge of the hardware they were adding to properly connect the devices. However, the PCI bus made it much simpler, allowing for ease in assembly.

Originally, the computer controlled the transfer of data, its efforts included interpreting, receiving, and sending out the data. Later on, a bus mastering device was created. It essentially has the capability of controlling its own transfer of data to another device, allowing the computer to focus on other tasks. Its essence this device freed up the computer, allowing for more efficiency.[2]

• Computer bus
• Expansion card