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Expansion Card
In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus slot) on a computer's motherboard (see also backplane) to add functionality to a computer system. Sometimes the design of the computer's case and motherboard involves placing most (or all) of these slots onto a separate, removable card. Typically such cards are referred to as a riser card in part because they project upward from the board and allow expansion cards to be placed above and parallel to the motherboard. Expansion cards allow the capabilities and interfaces of a computer system to be extended or supplemented in a way appropriate to the tasks it will perform. For example, a high-speed multi-channel data acquisition system would be of no use in a personal computer used for bookkeeping, but might be a key part of a system used for i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industry Standard Architecture
Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) is the 16-bit internal bus of IBM PC/AT and similar computers based on the Intel 80286 and its immediate successors during the 1980s. The bus was (largely) backward compatible with the 8-bit bus of the 8088-based IBM PC, including the IBM PC/XT as well as IBM PC compatibles. Originally referred to as the PC bus (8-bit) or AT bus (16-bit), it was also termed ''I/O Channel'' by IBM. The ISA term was coined as a retronym by competing PC-clone manufacturers in the late 1980s or early 1990s as a reaction to IBM attempts to replace the AT-bus with its new and incompatible Micro Channel architecture. The 16-bit ISA bus was also used with 32-bit processors for several years. An attempt to extend it to 32 bits, called Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA), was not very successful, however. Later buses such as VESA Local Bus and PCI were used instead, often along with ISA slots on the same mainboard. Derivatives of the AT bus struct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micral
Micral is a series of microcomputers produced by the French company Réalisation d'Études Électroniques ( R2E), beginning with the Micral N in early 1973. The Micral N was the first commercially available microprocessor-based computer. In 1986, three judges at The Computer Museum, Boston – Apple II designer and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak, early MITS employee and ''PC World'' publisher David Bunnell, and the museum's associate director and curator Oliver Strimpel – awarded the title of "first personal computer using a microprocessor" to the 1973 Micral. The Micral N was the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer based on a microprocessor (in this case, the Intel 8008). The Computer History Museum currently says that the Micral is one of the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computers. The 1971 |
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors. The predecessors to these computers, mainframes and minicomputers, were comparatively much larger and more expensive (though indeed present-day mainframes such as the IBM System z machines use one or more custom microprocessors as their CPUs). Many microcomputers (when equipped with a keyboard and screen for input and output) are also personal computers (in the generic sense). An early use of the term ''personal computer'' in 1962 predates microprocessor-based designs. ''(See "Personal Computer: Computers at Companies" reference below)''. A ''microcomputer'' used as an embedded control system may have no human-readable inp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-8
The PDP-8 is a 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneering LINC but has a smaller instruction set, which is an expanded version of the PDP-5 instruction set. Similar machines from DEC are the PDP-12 which is a modernized version of the PDP-8 and LINC concepts, and the PDP-14 industrial controller system. Overview The earliest PDP-8 model, informally known as a "Straight-8", was introduced on 22 March 1965 priced at $18,500 (). It used diode–transistor logic packaged on flip chip cards in a machine about the size of a small household refrigerator. It was the first computer to be sold for under $20,000, making it the best-selling computer in history at that time. The Straight-8 was supplanted in 1966 by the PDP-8/S, which was available in desktop and rack-mount models. Using a one-bit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating Point Unit
Floating may refer to: * a type of dental work performed on horse teeth * use of an isolation tank * the guitar-playing technique where chords are sustained rather than scratched * ''Floating'' (play), by Hugh Hughes * Floating (psychological phenomenon), slipping into altered states * Floating exchange rate, a market-valued currency * Floating voltage, and floating ground, a voltage or ground in an electric circuit that is not connected to the Earth or another reference voltage * Floating point, a representation in computing of rational numbers most commonly associated with the IEEE 754 standard * ''Floating'' (film), a 1997 American drama film Albums and songs * ''Floating'' (Eloy album) (1974) * ''Floating'' (Ketil Bjørnstad album) (2005) * ''Floating'' (EP), a 1991 EP by Bill Callahan * "Floating" (The Moody Blues song) (1969) * "Floating" (Megan Rochell song) (2006) * "Floating" (Jape song) (2004) * "Floating", a song by Jolin Tsai from the 2000 album '' Don't S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integrated Circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny MOSFETs (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors) integrate into a small chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete electronic components. The IC's mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to integrated circuit design has ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in virtually all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size and low cost of ICs such as modern compute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PCI Express
PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common motherboard interface for personal computers' graphics cards, hard disk drive host adapters, SSDs, Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware connections. PCIe has numerous improvements over the older standards, including higher maximum system bus throughput, lower I/O pin count and smaller physical footprint, better performance scaling for bus devices, a more detailed error detection and reporting mechanism (Advanced Error Reporting, AER), and native hot-swap functionality. More recent revisions of the PCIe standard provide hardware support for I/O virtualization. The PCI Express electrical interface is measured by the number of simultaneous lanes. (A lane is a single send/receive line of data. The analogy is a highway with traffic in both direct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer and is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format that is independent of any given processor's native bus. Devices connected to the PCI bus appear to a bus master to be connected directly to its own bus and are assigned addresses in the processor's address space. It is a parallel bus, synchronous to a single bus clock. Attached devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard (called a ''planar device'' in the PCI specification) or an expansion card that fits into a slot. The PCI Local Bus was first implemented in IBM PC compatibles, where it displaced the combination of several slow Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) slots and one fast VESA Local Bus (VLB) slot as the bus configuration. It has subsequently been adopted for other computer types. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM PC Compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers after it sold its personal computer division in 2005 to Chinese technology company Lenovo. The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers. These "clones" duplicated almost all the significant features of the original IBM PC architect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micro Channel Architecture
Micro Channel architecture, or the Micro Channel bus, is a proprietary 16- or 32-bit parallel computer bus introduced by IBM in 1987 which was used on PS/2 and other computers until the mid-1990s. Its name is commonly abbreviated as "MCA", although not by IBM. In IBM products, it superseded the ISA bus and was itself subsequently superseded by the PCI bus architecture. Background The development of Micro Channel was driven by both technical and business pressures. Technology The IBM AT bus, which later became known as the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus, had a number of technical design limitations, including: * A slow bus speed. * A limited number of interrupts, fixed in hardware. * A limited number of I/O device addresses, also fixed in hardware. * Hardwired and complex configuration with no conflict resolution. * Deep links to the architecture of the 80x86 chip familyUse of the ISA bus outside of machines employing the 80x86 CPU family was rare. Notable non- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Micro
The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability, and the quality of its operating system. An accompanying 1982 television series, '' The Computer Programme'', featuring Chris Serle learning to use the machine, was broadcast on BBC2. After the Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the ''Proton'', a successor of its Atom computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the system was adopted by most schools in the United Kingdom, changing Acorn's fortunes. It was also successful as a home computer in the UK, despite its high cost. Acorn later employed the machine to simulate and develop the ARM architecture. While nine mod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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