Jumpers are
small controls that determine which among a range of options is currently
active when configuring a certain device. On the motherboard, these are
used to set up write modes for flash memory, real time clock RAM, voltage
regulator output selection, clock bus frequency, CPU to bus frequency and
standard settings on hard disks. Most of these settings are set up for
optimum performance when the system is assembled. However, at times user
intervention can help boost the system performance, e.g. over clocking
the CPU, but only thoroughly knowledgeable individuals should exercise
such remedies. Wrong jumper settings can cause the system to malfunction
and can even damage components in some cases. The most common case of setting
up jumper is to add a new hard disk to the system that already has a master
hard disk from where it loads the operating system. When a second hard
disk is added to the system, it needs to be detected and configured accordingly.
There can be only one master hard disk on one IDE channel. Most systems
come with two PCI-IDE controllers that support up to two hard disks each.
Each hard disk comes with instructions on its body to configure it for
necessary modes. By switching the joining cap to the ideal location on
the jumper pins, the newer hard disk can be assigned to run in slave mode,
the one that does not load the default operating system. There is no power
supply to the computer system or the hard disk when changing jumpers, as
this might damage or cause the device to malfunction.
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