I circled the plug for the power supply in green- but you'll need to be careful, as the fan on the CPU is not connected (circled wire ends in red). If you plug this in and suceed in turning it on, your CPU will likely burn out in a couple of minutes without that fan running.

Rovio rules!
Wisconsin Iron :: Cellular Atomics

I have another motherboard with yellow and purple connectors on it like that, and the yellow is a game-port connector- 15 pin-holes in 2 rows. The purple is most certainly a parallel port connector, 25 pin holes in 2 rows, usually used for connecting older printers. A video connector should have 3 rows of pin-holes for a 15-pin plug on the monitor, and typically has blue plastic in its center. If you don't see a connector like that, you'll need to add a video card as well.

Good luck! 

Rovio rules!
Wisconsin Iron :: Cellular Atomics

Perhaps you should describe what you are trying to accomplish.

Are you planning on building your own circuit designs?

If so, I encourage you to get what is called a "breadboard". It is a plastic base, with holes that are electrically connected along each row, and electrically isolated between the rows. You use it to develop circuits by pressing component leads and jumper wire into the holes to connect up your circuit.

Once you have developed your circuit on the temporary breadboard, you have a choice of either hard wiring it together on a blank project board (perfboard), or of having a circuit specific printed circuit board created.

Here are some links to pages describing some of these terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board

ScottE -- Member (always) & Moderator (when needed)

PCB stands for Printed Circuit Board. They're printed to accomodate a specific circuit design. You'll need to have a circuit in mind (usually easiest to prototype on the aforementioned breadboard), built, and working correctly first. Then use something like Eagle to design the PCB. After that you can find several places that will make one-off PCBs for you, for a fee of course, or you can buy the chemical, tank, blank copper board, etc... to etch them at home (which I've never tried).

Unless you just want one to fiddle with, in which case that motherboard you have up there is a fine example of a multi-layer PCB (probably five or seven layers, I think).

You can also find several electronics kits in various places that will contain a premade PCB and a pile of parts which you can solder up and turn into some clever little doowhackey. Check out LadyAda's kitmakers page for a bit more information on places to find these.

(edit: added last paragraph) 

Watch out, don't step in the anthropomorphization.

Install to what? You'll need some kind of processor to read the data that sensor produces. You may want to look into the various microcontroller offerings that are out there. Read up on things like PIC, AVR, Propellor... Parallax, the site you linked, has several choices for learning about microcontrollers, like the BOE kits. Here's a bit of shameless self promotion that may (hopefully) help a bit.

Watch out, don't step in the anthropomorphization.

I don't mean any disrespect, but with the questions that Janemba is asking, maybe a more basic introduction to electronics should be recommended as a starting point. Maybe something along the lines of http://www.science-ebooks.com/electronics/basic_electronics.htm ... Again, no disrespect is intended, just a suggestion.

Derek Tombrello
www.RobotsAndComputers.com

and because I have to make a living...
www.ShelbyTVService.com

Yeah, it should work on a breadboard. If nothing else you may want to whip up a cable for it instead of plugging it directly in to the board, that way you can tweak on it's position and such.

I think p-basic is the programming language, isn't it? (anyone, correct me if I'm wrong) The breadboard is just the layer between the processor and the other bits (sensors, lights, motor controllers, etc...). Some developer kits include some kind of breadboard (BOE), others are designed to plug into the top of a standard breadboard (Freeduino). Some just have plain old headers sticking out that you can plug jumper wires into (like the Arduino).

Any standard sized DIP chip should plug into the center of a breadboard. However, you probably want to start with a package/kit of some sort, instead of individual components. As linked above, I chose the Arduino setup, which is basically just the processor and a power supply. If you want PBasic or a full robot kit, try something like this. It includes all the parts you need to build, program, and start using a basic wheeled robot, and is fairly upgradeable as you learn more (the PING sensor you linked earlier can be added to the BoeBot fairly easily).

edit: Good looking out RebelTaz! 

Watch out, don't step in the anthropomorphization.

I deleted RebelTaz's duplicate post.

Janemba, it's pretty obvious that you are jumping into some pretty deep water without first learning how to swim. 

Since it sounds like you've never worked on any electronics before, I highly recommend a prepackaged project kit to start with. Something that has all the parts, all the instructions, and a way to interconnect them without the need for circuit boards and solder.

For example,

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102913

Yes, it is an up front expense, but starting from scratch with no circuit experience and a box of dead circuit boards is a hard way to learn the basics. 

Once you use the project kit to learn the basics, then you scavenge parts off your cast off boards and cook up your own creations. 

ScottE -- Member (always) & Moderator (when needed)