Jumper

This is a little prong that acts as an on/off switch, which is used to alter hardware configurations. A jumper is typically made of two wires and a small piece of metal. When the wires are connected by the metal piece, the jumper is turned on, completing the circuit. Mulitple jumpers, sometimes referred to as a jumper block, are often used to tell the computer how a certain device is configured and what operations can be performed. They can be found on motherboards, modem cards, sound cards, graphics cards, I/O cards, CD-ROM interface boards, and controller boards. Since setting jumpers can be a confusing process, computers usually come with jumpers preset. Better yet, a lot of plug-and-play equipment available today does not require jumpers to be set. The only time you should ever have to worry about setting jumpers is when you add new hardware to your computer. Usually the hardware you are installing also comes with instructions on how to set the jumpers.