Every PCB is a “motherboard”, apparently  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 04:05:01 am
content: I see this a fair bit on YouTube videos. Uneducated people say “Look at the motherboard”, as they point at any old PCB. A bloke just pointed at the PCB of a broken Xbox controller “ooooh, look at the motherboard” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯I blame the likes of “iFixit” etc who use incorrect terminology all the time, and homogenise specific parts into the wrong category.The term “motherboard” implies it had a daughter board, as many computers had. If it’s a PCB that can’t even HAVE that extensibility, the term is nonsense.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 09:51:21 am
content: Yes, people outside of the trade often use incorrect or imprecise terms.And that's fine - exact terminology is something that's not trivial to teach to people without the education or basic understanding of the area, and it is not something I would expect of them. There's no one to blame since it's not that much of a problem.I'm sure that I use improper terms for stuff involving say, architecture, botany or chemistry - there's a lot of different types of standard glassware and I just say beaker or test tube until corrected. Or glass thingyCan you tell the difference between Griffin beaker and an Erlenmeyer flask of the top of your head?

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 11:05:32 am
content: I canAnd it's not just ignorance - many a*holes will deliberately use terms they aren't quite familiar with in attempt to sound smarter than they are. Internet is cancer.

author: mc172
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 12:41:11 pm
content: Quote from: eti on January 03, 2022, 04:05:01 amLike this?

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 12:49:02 pm
content: Quote from: eti on January 03, 2022, 04:05:01 amWhere are the "Father" boards? Don't both parents have rights!

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 12:58:36 pm
content: Wot about the non binary gender neutral boards?And what about the poor boards that are unable to have children?surely the term "mother" is causing then distress

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 01:01:36 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on January 03, 2022, 12:58:36 pmExactly! Remember the big kerfuffle regarding Master / Slave in the industry? This is the next crusade!

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 03, 2022, 01:03:02 pm
content: Quotei'll get onto it once ive woke up

author: Jwalling
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 04, 2022, 09:35:49 am
content: Quote from: xrunner on January 03, 2022, 12:49:02 pmPlaying with the daughter boards?

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2022, 09:54:54 am
content: The whole concept of "parent"-boards seems fairly problematic and indicative of a rather backwards society; r/ChildFree wouldn't approveI was about to suggest "carrier board" but then thought about American militarism and colonialism - 'nuff saidSeriously now, what could be the proper way of calling those things in the second decade of the 21st century?

author: david77
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2022, 10:26:27 am
content: If I recall correctly IBM used the term "Planar", that seems fairly neutral.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2022, 11:30:59 am
content: Apple has stuck with the terminology they came up with for the original Mac, which had two boards: the “analog board” (containing the PSU and the CRT driver circuitry) and the “logic board” (the motherboard). They kept the “logic board” name even on models without built-in displays, including desktop and tower models that use very ordinary topologies of a single board (with or without expansion cards) and a steel-boxed PSU. As far as I know, every single Mac model, even to this day, has used the “logic board” name for its main PCB.

author: mrburnzie
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2022, 09:54:50 am
content: Customs in Serbia always regards them as motherboards and sometimes even parts of computers... and when you get customs on a 2$ pcb from jlcpcb, it's quite fun!

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2022, 09:58:52 am
content: Motherboard / mainboard, meh, it just means the primary PCB in a product.The only incorrect usage I can think of is if a product only has 1 pcb in it.It has to be the mother or the main board within multiple boards.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2022, 10:00:05 am
content: Quote from: xrunner on January 03, 2022, 12:49:02 pmThem called Mainboards now.