What Are Jumpers?

[Keikan]

What are jumpers? They seems so complicated, and do you neeed any special equipment for jumpers?

[dingoBaby]

Jumpers for what? What are you trying to do?

[Broken]

uhmm... certain hardware in a computer that is not plug and play (self configuring) need to be configured manually through the use of jumpers. i'd really have to know what you wnat to know aoubt them to fully answer the question without going into half a page worth of info. most everything in a modern computer is plug and play and you won't have to deal with jumper settings. the only exception i can think of off hand is the hard drive that needs to be configured as master or slave, and perhapes the motherboard for the processor... and i do say perhapes as in probably not.

[Keikan]

Umm lets start with processer/w mobo and the hard drive, do u need to go buy something for jumpers?

[dingoBaby]

This is a picture of jumpers for a hard drive. They are the little plastic pieces.

[Broken]

jumpers a part of the motherboard or hard drive, they aren't something that you buy. they are like switches (and i am using that just as an example) that are on them that tell them what you want them to do.

[james_bond_rulez]

jumpers are basically a metally bridge wrapped in a plastic case. jumpers work by "shorting out" 2 connector nodes and are often used for configuration purposes.

most commonly seen on hdds where you have to set the hdd to be a master or a slave on an IDE bus

[Keikan]

So basically it's just going to the bathroom and turning the light on and off?

[james_bond_rulez]

yeah....

if that helps....

[Broken]

i used the switch thing to make it kind of easier to understand, it's just a little piece of plastic with a wire in it. the only thing that really uses jumpers anymore are hard drives (which is very simple and they usually have the settings printed on them) and some motherboards.