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Multimedia PC
The Multimedia PC (MPC) was a recommended configuration for a personal computer (PC) with a CD-ROM drive. The standard was set and named by the "Multimedia PC Marketing Council", which was a working group of the Software Publishers Association (SPA, now the Software and Information Industry Association). The MPMC comprised companies including Microsoft, Creative Labs, Dell, Gateway, and Fujitsu. Any PC with the required standards could be called an "MPC" by licensing the use of the logo from the SPA. CD-ROM drives were just coming to market in 1990, and it was difficult to concisely communicate to a consumer all the hardware requirements for using "multimedia software", which mostly meant "displaying video synced with audio on a PC via a CD-ROM drive". The MPC standard was supposed to communicate this concisely, so a consumer buying hardware or software could simply look for the MPC logo and be assured of compatibility. The MPC program had mixed results primarily because of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Personal Computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large, costly minicomputers and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers. Primarily in the late 1970s and 1980s, the term home computer was also used. Institutional or corporate computer owners in the 1960s had to write their own programs to do any useful work with the machines. While personal computer users may develop their own applications, usually these systems run commercial software, free-of-charge software ("freeware"), which is most often proprietary, or free and open-source software, which is provided in "ready-to-run", or binary, form. Software for personal computers is typically developed and distributed independently from the hardware or operating system ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seek Time
Higher performance in hard disk drives comes from devices which have better performance characteristics. These performance characteristics can be grouped into two categories: access time and data transfer time (or rate). Access time The ''access time'' or ''response time'' of a rotating drive is a measure of the time it takes before the drive can actually transfer data. The factors that control this time on a rotating drive are mostly related to the mechanical nature of the rotating disks and moving heads. It is composed of a few independently measurable elements that are added together to get a single value when evaluating the performance of a storage device. The access time can vary significantly, so it is typically provided by manufacturers or measured in benchmarks as an average. The key components that are typically added together to obtain the access time are: * Seek time * Rotational latency * Command processing time * Settle time Seek time With rotating drives, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows Sound System
Windows Sound System (WSS) is a sound card specification developed by Microsoft released at the end of 1992 for Windows 3.1. WSS featured support for up to 16-bit, 48 kHz digital sampling, beyond the capabilities of the popular contemporary Sound Blaster Pro, although it was less frequently supported than Sound Blaster and Gravis sound cards, as well as Roland sound cards, daughterboards, and sound modules. In addition, the WSS featured RCA analog audio outputs, an uncommon feature among sound cards of this era; other connections were a microphone input, a stereo line input and a stereo headphone output. The Windows Sound System was sold as a bundle which included an ISA sound card, a microphone, a pair of headphones and the software package. WSS 1.0a drivers were released in February 1993. They introduced single-mode DMA, supported games in MS-DOS, Ad Lib and Sound Blaster emulation.WSS 2.0 drivers, released in October 1993, added support for OEM sound cards (Media Visi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PC System Design Guide
The PC System Design Guide (also known as the PC-97, PC-98, PC-99, or PC 2001 specification) is a series of hardware design requirements and recommendations for IBM PC compatible personal computers, compiled by Microsoft and Intel Corporation during 1997–2001. They were aimed at helping manufacturers provide hardware that made the best use of the capabilities of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and to simplify setup and use of such computers. Every part of a standard computer and the most common kinds of peripheral devices are defined with specific requirements. Systems and devices that meet the specification should be automatically recognized and configured by the operating system. Versions Four versions of the PC System Design Guide were released. In PC-97, a distinction was made between the requirements of a ''Basic PC'', a ''Workstation PC'' and an ''Entertainment PC''. In PC-98, the ''Mobile PC'' was added as a category. In PC 2001, the ''Entertainment PC'' was dropp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995, almost three months after the release of Windows NT 3.51. Windows 95 merged Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows products, and featured significant improvements over its predecessor, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-and-play" features. There were also major changes made to the core components of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly cooperatively multitasked 16-bit architecture to a 32-bit preemptive multitasking architecture, at least when running only 32-bit protected mode applications. Accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, Windows 95 introduced numerous functions and features that w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MPEG-1
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) practical. Today, MPEG-1 has become the most widely compatible lossy audio/video format in the world, and is used in a large number of products and technologies. Perhaps the best-known part of the MPEG-1 standard is the first version of the MP3 audio format it introduced. The MPEG-1 standard is published as ISO/IEC 11172 – Information technology—Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1.5 Mbit/s. The standard consists of the following five ''Parts'': #Systems (storage and synchronization of video, audio, and other data together) #Video (compressed video content) #Audio (compressed audio content) #Conformance tes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frame Rate
Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be called the , and be expressed in hertz. Frame rate in electronic camera specifications may refer to the maximal possible rate, where, in practice, other settings (such as exposure time) may reduce the frequency to a lower number. Human vision The temporal sensitivity and resolution of human vision varies depending on the type and characteristics of visual stimulus, and it differs between individuals. The human visual system can process 10 to 12 images per second and perceive them individually, while higher rates are perceived as motion. Modulated light (such as a computer display) is perceived as stable by the majority of participants in studies when the rate is higher than 50 Hz. This perception of modulated light as steady is known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel P5
The Pentium (also referred to as P5, its microarchitecture, or i586) is a fifth generation, 32-bit x86 microprocessor that was introduced by Intel on March 22, 1993, as the very first CPU in the Pentium brand. It was instruction set compatible with the 80486 but was a new and very different microarchitecture design from previous iterations. The P5 Pentium was the first superscalar x86 microarchitecture and the world's first superscalar microprocessor to be in mass productionmeaning it generally executes at least 2 instructions per clock mainly because of a design-first dual integer pipeline design previously thought impossible to implement on a CISC microarchitecture. Additional features include a faster floating-point unit, wider data bus, separate code and data caches, and many other techniques and features to enhance performance and support security, encryption, and multiprocessing, for workstations and servers when compared to the next best previous industry standard proces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CD Quality
The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in October 1982 in Japan and branded as '' Digital Audio Compact Disc''. The format was later adapted (as CD-ROM) for general-purpose data storage. Several other formats were further derived, including write-once audio and data storage (CD-R), rewritable media (CD-RW), Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD), Photo CD, Picture CD, Compact Disc-Interactive ( CD-i) and Enhanced Music CD. Standard CDs have a diameter of and are designed to hold up to 74 minutes of uncompressed stereo digital audio or about 650 MiB of data. Capacity is routinely extended to 80 minutes and 700 MiB by arranging data more closely on the same sized disc. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from ; they are sometimes used for CD singles, storing up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Highcolour
High color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by two bytes. Usually the color is represented by all 16 bits, but some devices also support 15-bit high color. More recently, the term ''high color'' has been used by Microsoft to identify display systems that can make use of more than 8-bits per color channel (10:10:10:2 or 16:16:16:16 rendering formats) from traditional 8-bit per color channel formats. This is a different and distinct usage from the 15-bit (5:5:5) or 16-bit (5:6:5) formats traditionally associated with the phrase ''high color''. 15-bit high color In 15-bit high color, one of the bits of the two bytes is ignored or set aside for an alpha channel, and the remaining 15 bits are split between the red, green, and blue components of the final color. Each of the RGB components has 5 bits associated, giving 2⁵ = 32 intensities of each component. This allows 32768 possible colors for each pixel. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel 80486SX
Intel's i486SX was a modified Intel 486DX microprocessor with its floating-point unit (FPU) disabled. It was intended as a lower-cost CPU for use in low-end systems. Computer manufacturers that used these processors include Packard Bell, Compaq, ZEOS and IBM. Overview In the mid-early 1990s, common applications did not need or benefit from an FPU. Among the rare exceptions were CAD applications, which could often simulate floating point operations in software, but benefited from a hardware floating point unit immensely. AMD had begun manufacturing its 386DX clone which was faster than Intel's. To respond to this new situation Intel wanted to provide a lower cost i486 CPU for system integrators, but without sacrificing the better profit margins of a "full" i486. This was accomplished through a debug feature called Disable Floating Point (DFP), by grounding a certain bond wire in the CPU package. The i486SX was introduced in mid-1991 at 20 MHz in a PGA package. Later (1992) versi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows 3
Windows 3.x means either of, or all of the following versions of Microsoft Windows: * Windows 3.0 * Windows 3.1x Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ... Windows NT * Windows NT 3.x 3.x {{Short pages monitor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
