AST Research
AST Research, Inc., later doing business as AST Computer, was a personal computer manufacturer. It was founded in 1980 in Irvine, California by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, and Thomas Yuen, as an initialism of their first names. In the 1980s, AST designed add-on expansion cards, and evolved toward the 1990s into a major personal computer manufacturer. AST was acquired by Samsung Electronics in 1997 but was ''de facto'' closed in 1999 due to a series of losses. Foundation (1979–1986) AST Research was founded as AST Associates by Thomas C. K. Yuen, Albert C. Wong, and Safi U. Qureshey. All three were immigrants to the United States—Yuen and Wong from Hong Kong and Qureshey from Pakistan. Yuen had met Qureshey while working for Computer Automation Inc. in the 1970s, while Wong was a roommate of Yuen's while they both attended Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California. All had come to the United States to study engineering. Yuen was the principal founder of AST, proposi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with games like ''Rock n' Roll Racing'' and ''The Lost Vikings''. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., and eventually Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard released '' Warcraft: Orcs & Humans''. Since then, Blizzard Entertainment has created several ''Warcraft'' sequels, including highly influential massively multiplayer online role-playing game ''World of Warcraft'' in 2004, as well as three other multi-million s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charter Issue
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also examples of periodicals. These publications cover a wide variety of topics, from academic, technical, trade, and general interest to leisure and entertainment. Articles within a periodical are usually organized around a single main subject or theme and include a title, date of publication, author(s), and brief summary of the article. A periodical typically contains an editorial section that comments on subjects of interest to its readers. Other common features are reviews of recently published books and films, columns that express the author's opinions about various topics, and advertisements. A periodical is a serial publication. A book is also a serial publication, but is not typically called a periodical. An encyclopedia or dictionary is also ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Compact Macintosh
A Compact Macintosh (or Compact Mac) is an all-in-one Apple Mac computer with a display integrated in the computer case, beginning with the original Macintosh 128K. Compact Macs include the original Macintosh through to the Color Classic sold between 1984 and the mid-1990s. The larger Macintosh LC 500 series, Power Macintosh 5000 series and iMac are not described as a "Compact Mac." Apple divides these models into five form factors: The Macintosh 128K, Macintosh SE, and Macintosh Classic (all with a black and white screen), the modernized Macintosh Color Classic The Macintosh Color Classic (sold as the Macintosh Colour Classic in PAL regions) is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from February 1993 to May 1995 (up to January 1998 in PAL markets). It has an all ... with a color screen, and the very different Macintosh XL. Models *220 V international models are appended with the letter "P" (e.g. ''M0001P'') Timeline ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hard Disk Drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data when powered off. Modern HDDs are typically in the form of a small rectangular box. Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs were the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers beginning in the early 1960s. HDDs maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers, though personal computing devices produced in large volume, like cell phones and tablets, rely on ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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IBM Product Center
IBM Product Center was an American retailer wholly owned by International Business Machines that sold the company's office equipment, which consisted at the time mostly of photocopiers, typewriters and personal computers. The first store opened in 1980 in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. History The Product Center ran concurrent with IBM's Business Computer Centers, which were demonstration and training centers for the company's products established in the 1920s. While these Business Computer Centers were aimed at small and large businesses alike, the Product Centers were aimed chiefly to market IBM's lower-cost office equipment at small businesses and home office buyers. The Product Centers featured bright red carpet and ceiling speakers that played pop music. Its flagship Philadelphia store in 1981 sold just 17 products: several models of word processors and typewriters, a POS cash register, a dictation machine, a Series III photocopier (the Product Center's most expens ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Initial Public Offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment banks, who also arrange for the shares to be listed on one or more stock exchanges. Through this process, colloquially known as ''floating'', or ''going public'', a privately held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used to raise new equity capital for companies, to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders or private equity investors, and to enable easy trading of existing holdings or future capital raising by becoming publicly traded. After the IPO, shares are traded freely in the open market at what is known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms (the total value as determined by the share price multiplied by the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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High-Level Data Link Control
High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) is a bit-oriented code-transparent synchronous data link layer protocol developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The standard for HDLC is ISO/IEC 13239:2002. HDLC provides both connection-oriented and connectionless service. HDLC can be used for point-to-multipoint connections via the original master-slave modes Normal Response Mode (NRM) and Asynchronous Response Mode (ARM), but they are now rarely used; it is now used almost exclusively to connect one device to another, using ''Asynchronous Balanced Mode'' (ABM). History HDLC is based on IBM's SDLC protocol, which is the layer 2 protocol for IBM's Systems Network Architecture (SNA). It was extended and standardized by the ITU as LAP (Link Access Procedure), while ANSI named their essentially identical version ADCCP. The HDLC specification does not specify the full semantics of the frame fields. This allows other fully compliant standards to be derived fr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Synchronous Data Link Control
Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC) is a computer communications protocol. It is the layer 2 protocol for IBM's Systems Network Architecture (SNA). SDLC supports multipoint links as well as error correction. It also runs under the assumption that an SNA header is present after the SDLC header. SDLC was mainly used by IBM mainframe and midrange systems; however, implementations exist on many platforms from many vendors. In the United States and Canada, SDLC can be found in traffic control cabinets. In 1975, IBM developed the first bit-oriented protocol, SDLC,PC Lube and Tune accessed 15. October 2009. from work done for IBM in the early 1970s.. This [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Binary Synchronous Communications
Binary Synchronous Communication (BSC or Bisync) is an IBM character-oriented, half-duplex link protocol, announced in 1967 after the introduction of System/360. It replaced the synchronous transmit-receive (STR) protocol used with second generation computers. The intent was that common link management rules could be used with three different character encodings for messages. Six-bit Transcode looked backwards to older systems; USASCII with 128 characters and EBCDIC with 256 characters looked forward. Transcode disappeared very quickly but the EBCDIC and USASCII dialects of Bisync continued in use. At one time Bisync was the most widely used communications protocol and is still in limited use in 2013. Framing Bisync differs from protocols that succeeded it in the complexity of message framing. Later protocols use a single framing scheme for all messages sent by the protocol. HDLC, Digital Data Communications Message Protocol (DDCMP), Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), etc. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Asynchronous Serial Communication
Asynchronous serial communication is a form of serial communication in which the communicating endpoints' interfaces are not continuously synchronized by a common clock signal. Instead of a common synchronization signal, the data stream contains synchronization information in form of start and stop signals, before and after each unit of transmission, respectively. The start signal prepares the receiver for arrival of data and the stop signal resets its state to enable triggering of a new sequence. A common kind of start-stop transmission is ASCII over RS-232, for example for use in teletypewriter operation. Origin Mechanical teleprinters using 5-bit codes (see Baudot code) typically used a stop period of 1.5 bit times.Dead link: 2015-Oct-03 Very early electromechanical teletypewriters (pre-1930) could require 2 stop bits to allow mechanical impression without buffering. Hardware which does not support fractional stop bits can communicate with a device that uses 1.5 bit time ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such as a computer terminal, and a ''DCE'' (''data circuit-terminating equipment'' or ''data communication equipment''), such as a modem. The standard defines the electrical characteristics and timing of signals, the meaning of signals, and the physical size and pinout of connectors. The current version of the standard is ''TIA-232-F Interface Between Data Terminal Equipment and Data Circuit-Terminating Equipment Employing Serial Binary Data Interchange'', issued in 1997. The RS-232 standard had been commonly used in computer serial ports and is still widely used in industrial communication devices. A serial port complying with the RS-232 standard was once a standard feature of many types of computers. Personal computers used them for connection ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |