Jumper

Jumpers allow the computer to close an electrical circuit, allowing the electricity to flow throughout certain sections of the circuit board. Jumpers consist of a set of small pins that can be covered with a small plastic box as shown in the illustration to the right. Below the illustration is a picture of what the jumpers may look like. In this example, the jumpers have a small tab on top of them allowing them to be easily removed.
Jumpers are used to configure the settings for computer peripherals such as the motherboard, hard drives, modems, sound cards, and various other components.
Today, most users will not have to adjust or change the jumpers on their motherboard and will often only need to change the jumpers for a new hard disk drive. As can be seen in the below picture most hard disk drives with jumpers will have 3 sets of two pins or six pins and moving the jumper block will change the drive from master drive, slave drive, or cable select.

Note: When changing the jumpers on any device, the device and your computer should be turned off first. In addition whenever inside the computer you should always be aware of ESD

Also see: Dip switch, Electronic definitions, Jump
.