1.
Illustration
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The origin of the word “illustration” is late Middle English, via Old French from Latin illustratio, from the verb illustrate. Contemporary illustration uses a range of styles and techniques, including drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, montage, digital design, multimedia. Most illustrators work on a freelance basis, depending on the purpose, illustration may be expressive, stylised, realistic or highly technical. This may include exploded views, cutaways, fly-throughs, reconstructions, instructional images, component designs, in contemporary illustration practice, 2D and 3D software is often used to create accurate representations that can be updated easily, and reused in a variety of contexts. In the art world, illustration has at times been considered of less importance than graphic design, original illustration art has been known to attract high prices at auction. The US artist Norman Rockwells painting Breaking Home Ties sold in a 2006 Sothebys auction for USD15.4 million, many other illustration genres are equally valued, with pinup artists such as Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas, for example, also attracting high prices. Historically, the art of illustration is closely linked to the processes of printing and publishing. The illustrations of medieval codices were known as illuminations, and were hand drawn. With the invention of the press during the 15th century, books became more widely distributed. Subjects included traditional folk tales, popular figures and every day life, hokusai’s The Great Wave of Kanazawa is a famous image of the time. During the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, the main reproduction processes for illustration were engraving and etching, in 18th Century England, a notable illustrator was William Blake, who used relief etching. By the early 19th century, the introduction of lithography substantially improved reproduction quality, in Europe, notable figures of the early 19th Century were John Leech, George Cruikshank, Dickens illustrator Hablot Knight Browne, and, in France, Honoré Daumier. All contributed to both satirical and “serious” publications, at this time, there was a great demand for caricature drawings encapsulating social mores, types and classes. Although all fine art trained, their reputations were gained primarily as illustrators, in common with similar magazines such as the Parisian Le Voleur, Punch realised good illustration sold as well as good text. With publication continuing into the 21st Century, Punch chronicles a gradual shift in popular illustration, from the early 1800s newspapers, mass market magazines, and illustrated books had become the dominant consumer media in Europe and the New World. By the 19th Century, improvements in printing technology freed illustrators to experiment with color, in America, this led to a golden age of illustration from before the 1880s until the early 20th Century. A small group of illustrators became highly successful, with the imagery they created considered a portrait of American aspirations of the time
2.
Personal computer
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A personal computer is a multi-purpose electronic computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. PCs are intended to be operated directly by a end-user, rather than by an expert or technician. In the 2010s, PCs are typically connected to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web, personal computers may be connected to a local area network, either by a cable or a wireless connection. In the 2010s, a PC may be, a multi-component desktop computer, designed for use in a location a laptop computer, designed for easy portability or a tablet computer. In the 2010s, PCs run using a system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a program to load programs from external storage. Before long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal, in the 2010s, users have access to a wide range of commercial software, free software and free and open-source software, which are provided in ready-to-run or ready-to-compile form. Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the computer market, first with MS-DOS. Alternatives to Microsofts Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry and these include Apples OS X and free open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution. Advanced Micro Devices provides the alternative to Intels processors. PC is an initialism for personal computer, some PCs, including the OLPC XOs, are equipped with x86 or x64 processors but not designed to run Microsoft Windows. PC is used in contrast with Mac, an Apple Macintosh computer and this sense of the word is used in the Get a Mac advertisement campaign that ran between 2006 and 2009, as well as its rival, Im a PC campaign, that appeared in 2008. Since Apples transition to Intel processors starting 2005, all Macintosh computers are now PCs, the “brain” may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far, in the history of computing there were many examples of computers designed to be used by one person, as opposed to terminals connected to mainframe computers. Using the narrow definition of operated by one person, the first personal computer was the ENIAC which became operational in 1946 and it did not meet further definitions of affordable or easy to use. An example of an early single-user computer was the LGP-30, created in 1956 by Stan Frankel and used for science and it came with a retail price of $47, 000—equivalent to about $414,000 today. Introduced at the 1965 New York Worlds Fair, the Programma 101 was a programmable calculator described in advertisements as a desktop computer. It was manufactured by the Italian company Olivetti and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the Soviet MIR series of computers was developed from 1965 to 1969 in a group headed by Victor Glushkov
3.
Desk
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Desks often have one or more drawers, compartments, or pigeonholes to store items such as office supplies and papers. Desks are usually made of wood or metal, although materials such as tempered glass are sometimes seen, some desks have the form of a table, although usually only one side of a desk is suitable to sit at, unlike most usual tables. Some desks do not have the form of a table, for instance, a desk is a desk built within a large wardrobe-like cabinet. Since many people lean on a desk while using it, a desk must be sturdy, in most cases, people sit at a desk, either on a separate chair or a built-in chair. Some users stand at their desks using higher standing desks, the word desk originated from the Modern Latin word desca “table to write on”, from the mid 14th century. It is a modification of the Old Italian desco table, from Latin discus dish or disc, the word desk has been used figuratively since 1797. A desk may also be known as a bureau, counter, davenport, escritoire, lectern, reading stand, rolltop desk, school desk, workspace, or writing desk. Desk-style furniture appears not to have used in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of literate civilization in the Middle East or Far East. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have designed and constructed for reading and writing. Before the invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century, the desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmarks and for writing implements. Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures, desks of the Renaissance and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers were added as woodworking became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. It is often possible to find out if a table or other piece of furniture of those times was designed to be used as a desk, the basic desk forms were developed mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The modern ergonomic desk is a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table from the end of the 18th century and this allowed an increase in the number of the white-collar workers. As these office workers grew in number, desks were mass-produced for them in quantities, using newer. This was the first sharp division in desk manufacturing, thus, age alone does not guarantee that an antique desk is a masterpiece, since this split in quality took place more than a hundred years ago. More paper and correspondence drove the need for more complex desks and more specialized desks, such as the rolltop desk and it provided a relatively fast and cheap way to lock up the ever increasing flow of paperwork without having to file everything by the end of the day. Paper documents became voluminous enough to be stored separately in filing cabinets, the famous Wooton desk and others were the last manifestations of the pigeonhole style. The surfaces of some newer desks could be transformed into different shapes and angles, and were ideal for artists, draftsmen
4.
Mains electricity
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Mains electricity is the general-purpose alternating-current electric power supply. The two principal properties of the power supply, voltage and frequency, differ between regions. A voltage of 230 V and a frequency of 50 Hz is used in Europe, most of Africa, most of Asia, most of South America, in North America, the most common combination is 120 V and a frequency of 60 Hz. Other voltages exist, and some countries may have, for example,230 V but 60 Hz and this is a concern to travelers, since portable appliances designed for one voltage and frequency combination may not operate with or may be destroyed by another. In the UK, mains power is generally referred to as the mains. All these parameters vary among regions, the voltages are generally in the range 100–240 V. The two commonly used frequencies are 50 Hz and 60 Hz, single-phase or three-phase power is most commonly used today, although two-phase systems were used early in the 20th century. Foreign enclaves, such as industrial plants or overseas military bases. Some city areas may use different from that of the surrounding countryside. Regions in a state of anarchy may have no central electrical authority. Many other combinations of voltage and utility frequency were formerly used, direct current has been almost completely displaced by alternating current in public power systems, but DC was used especially in some city areas to the end of the 20th century. The modern combinations of 230 V/50 Hz and 120 V/60 Hz, listed in IEC60038, electricity is used for lighting, heating, cooling, electric motors and electronic equipment. The U. S. Energy Information Administration has published, Estimated U. S.3 Does not include water heating,4 Includes small electric devices, heating elements, and motors which are not listed above. Does not include electric vehicle charging, electronic appliances, typically use an AC to DC converter to power the device, this is often capable of operation over the approximate range of 100 V to 250 V and at 50 Hz to 60 Hz. The other categories are typically AC applications and usually have more restricted input ranges. A study by the Building Research Establishment in the UK states that The existing 230 V system is suited to the future of electricity whether through design or Darwinian processes. Any current perceived weakness is generally a result of cost reduction, questions as to whether there are alternatives to the existing 230 V AC system are often overshadowed by legacy issues, the future smart agenda and cost in all but specific situations. Where opportunities do exist they are often for specific parts of the overall load, in many countries, household power is single-phase electric power, with two or three wired contacts at each outlet
5.
Computer case
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A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, tower, system unit, cabinet, base unit, or simply case, is the enclosure that contains most of the components of a computer. Cases are usually constructed from steel or aluminium, plastic is sometimes used, and other materials such as glass, wood and even Lego bricks have appeared in home-built cases. Cases can come in different sizes. The size and shape of a case is usually determined by the form factor of the motherboard. Consequently, personal computer form factors typically specify only the internal dimensions, Form factors for rack-mounted and blade servers may include precise external dimensions as well, since these cases must themselves fit in specific enclosures. For example, a designed for an ATX motherboard and power supply may take on several external forms such as a vertical tower. Full-size tower cases are larger in volume than desktop cases, with more room for drive bays. Desktop cases—and mini-tower cases under about 46 cm high—are popular in business environments where space is at a premium, currently, the most popular form factor for desktop computers is ATX, although microATX and small form factors have also become very popular for a variety of uses. In the high-end segment the unofficial and loosely defined XL-ATX specification appeared around 2009 and it extends the length of the mainboard to accommodate four graphics cards with dual-slot coolers. Some XL-ATX mainboards increase the width as well, to allow more space for the CPU, Memory PWM and, in some cases. While the market share of these exotic high-end mainboards is very low, almost all high-end cases, companies like In Win Development, Shuttle Inc. and AOpen originally popularized small cases, for which FlexATX was the most common motherboard size. As of 2010 Mini ITX has widely replaced FlexATX as the most common form factor mainboard standard. The latest mini ITX mainboards from Asus, Gigabyte, Zotac, high-end mini ITX mainboards support standard desktop CPUs, use standard memory DIMM sockets and feature a full size PCI-E 16× slot with support for the fastest graphics cards. This allows customers to build a fully fledged high-end computer in a smaller case. Apple Inc. has also produced the Mac Mini computer, which is similar in size to a standard CD-ROM drive, tower cases are often categorized as mini-tower, midi-tower, mid-tower or full-tower. The terms are subjective and inconsistently defined by different manufacturers, full tower cases are typically 56 cm or more in height and intended to stand on the floor. They have anywhere from six to ten externally accessible drive bays, the ratio of external to internal bays is shifting, however, as computing technology moves from floppy disks and CD-ROMs to large capacity hard drives, USB flash drives, and network-based solutions. The full tower case was developed to house file servers which would typically be tasked with serving data from expensive CD-ROM databases which held more data than the hard drives commonly available
6.
Power supply unit (computer)
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A power supply unit converts mains AC to low-voltage regulated DC power for the internal components of a computer. Modern personal computers universally use switched-mode power supplies, some power supplies have a manual switch for selecting input voltage, while others automatically adapt to the mains voltage. Most modern desktop computer power supplies conform to the ATX specification. While an ATX power supply is connected to the supply, it always provides a 5 Volt standby voltage so that the standby functions on the computer. ATX power supplies are turned on and off by a signal from the motherboard and they also provide a signal to the motherboard to indicate when the DC voltages are in spec, so that the computer is able to safely power up and boot. The most recent ATX PSU standard is version 2.31 of mid-2008, the desktop computer power supply changes alternating current from a wall socket to low-voltage direct current to operate the processor and peripheral devices. Several direct-current voltages are required, and they must be regulated with some accuracy to provide stable operation of the computer, a power supply rail or voltage rail refers to a single voltage provided by a power supply unit. Although the term is used in electronic engineering, many people, especially computer enthusiasts. First-generation microcomputer and home computer power supply units used a heavy step-down transformer, modern computers use switched-mode power supplies with a ferrite-cored high frequency transformer. The switched-mode supply is much lighter and less costly, and is more efficient, computer power supplies may have short circuit protection, overpower protection, overvoltage protection, undervoltage protection, overcurrent protection, and over temperature protection. Recent power supplies have a standby voltage available, to allow most of the system to be powered off. When the computer is powered down but the supply is still on, it can be started remotely via Wake-on-LAN. This standby voltage is generated by a power supply inside the unit. In older PSU designs, it was used to supply the voltage regulator, located on the side of the transformer. The regulator controls the switching transistors insulated by optocouplers or pulse transformers, for this reason, a detected shoutcut may cause to wait up to an hour, until it can successful power up again. This meantime is defined by the grid side located filter capacitors have been discharged by the installed bleeding resistors, Power supplies designed for worldwide use were equipped with an input voltage selector switch that allowed the user to configure the unit for use on local power grid. In the lower range, around 115 V, this switch is turned on changing the power grid voltage rectifier into a voltage doubler in delon circuit design. Connecting the unit configured for the range to a higher-voltage grid usually resulted in an immediate permanent damage
7.
Motherboard
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A motherboard is the main printed circuit board found in general purpose microcomputers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit and memory. In very old designs, copper wires were the discrete connections between card connector pins, but printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice, the Central Processing Unit, memory, and peripherals were housed on individual printed circuit boards, which were plugged into the backplate. The ubiquitous S-100 bus of the 1970s is an example of type of backplane system. During the late 1980s and 1990s, it became economical to move a number of peripheral functions onto the motherboard. Business PCs, workstations, and servers were more likely to need expansion cards, either for more robust functions, or for higher speeds, laptop and notebook computers that were developed in the 1990s integrated the most common peripherals. This even included motherboards with no upgradeable components, a trend that would continue as smaller systems were introduced after the turn of the century, memory, processors, network controllers, power source, and storage would be integrated into some systems. A motherboard provides the connections by which the other components of the system communicate. Unlike a backplane, it contains the central processing unit and hosts other subsystems. A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main memory, an important component of a motherboard is the microprocessors supporting chipset, which provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components. This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard, modern motherboards include, Sockets in which one or more microprocessors may be installed. In the case of CPUs in ball grid array packages, such as the VIA C3, as of 2007, some graphics cards require more power than the motherboard can provide, and thus dedicated connectors have been introduced to attach them directly to the power supply. Connectors for hard drives, typically SATA only, disk drives also connect to the power supply. Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly used devices, such as USB for mouse devices. Early personal computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard, occasionally video interface hardware was also integrated into the motherboard, for example, on the Apple II and rarely on IBM-compatible computers such as the IBM PC Jr. Additional peripherals such as disk controllers and serial ports were provided as expansion cards, given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components, modern motherboards nearly always include heat sinks and mounting points for fans to dissipate excess heat. Motherboards are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes called computer form factor, however, the motherboards used in IBM-compatible systems are designed to fit various case sizes. As of 2007, most desktop computer motherboards use the ATX standard form factor — even those found in Macintosh and Sun computers, a cases motherboard and PSU form factor must all match, though some smaller form factor motherboards of the same family will fit larger cases
8.
Printed circuit board
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Components are generally soldered on the PCB. Advanced PCBs may contain components embedded in the substrate, PCBs can be single sided, double sided or multi-layer. Conductors on different layers are connected with vias, multi-layer PCBs allow for much higher component density. FR-4 glass epoxy is the primary insulating substrate, a basic building block of the PCB is an FR-4 panel with a thin layer of copper foil laminated to one or both sides. In multi-layer boards multiple layers of material are laminated together, printed circuit boards are used in all but the simplest electronic products. Alternatives to PCBs include wire wrap and point-to-point construction, PCBs require the additional design effort to lay out the circuit, but manufacturing and assembly can be automated. Manufacturing circuits with PCBs is cheaper and faster than other wiring methods as components are mounted and wired with one single part. A minimal PCB with a component used for easier prototyping is called a breakout board. When the board has no embedded components it is correctly called a printed wiring board or etched wiring board. However, the printed wiring board has fallen into disuse. A PCB populated with electronic components is called a printed circuit assembly, the IPC preferred term for assembled boards is circuit card assembly, and for assembled backplanes it is backplane assemblies. The term PCB is used both for bare and assembled boards. The world market for bare PCBs exceeded $60.2 billion in 2014, initially PCBs were designed manually by creating a photomask on a clear mylar sheet, usually at two or four times the true size. Starting from the diagram the component pin pads were laid out on the mylar. Rub-on dry transfers of common component footprints increased efficiency, traces were made with self-adhesive tape. Pre-printed non-reproducing grids on the mylar assisted in layout, to fabricate the board, the finished photomask was photolithographically reproduced onto a photoresist coating on the blank copper-clad boards. Modern PCBs are designed with dedicated software, generally in the following steps. Card dimensions and template are decided based on required circuitry and case of the PCB, the positions of the components and heat sinks are determined
9.
Microprocessor
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A microprocessor is a computer processor which incorporates the functions of a computers central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, Microprocessors operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary numeral system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a chip or on a few chips greatly reduced the cost of processing power. Integrated circuit processors are produced in numbers by highly automated processes resulting in a low per unit cost. Single-chip processors increase reliability as there are many electrical connections to fail. As microprocessor designs get better, the cost of manufacturing a chip generally stays the same, before microprocessors, small computers had been built using racks of circuit boards with many medium- and small-scale integrated circuits. Microprocessors combined this into one or a few large-scale ICs, the internal arrangement of a microprocessor varies depending on the age of the design and the intended purposes of the microprocessor. Advancing technology makes more complex and powerful chips feasible to manufacture, a minimal hypothetical microprocessor might only include an arithmetic logic unit and a control logic section. The ALU performs operations such as addition, subtraction, and operations such as AND or OR, each operation of the ALU sets one or more flags in a status register, which indicate the results of the last operation. The control logic retrieves instruction codes from memory and initiates the sequence of operations required for the ALU to carry out the instruction, a single operation code might affect many individual data paths, registers, and other elements of the processor. As integrated circuit technology advanced, it was feasible to manufacture more and more complex processors on a single chip, the size of data objects became larger, allowing more transistors on a chip allowed word sizes to increase from 4- and 8-bit words up to todays 64-bit words. Additional features were added to the architecture, more on-chip registers sped up programs. Floating-point arithmetic, for example, was not available on 8-bit microprocessors. Integration of the point unit first as a separate integrated circuit and then as part of the same microprocessor chip. Occasionally, physical limitations of integrated circuits made such practices as a bit slice approach necessary, instead of processing all of a long word on one integrated circuit, multiple circuits in parallel processed subsets of each data word. With the ability to put large numbers of transistors on one chip and this CPU cache has the advantage of faster access than off-chip memory, and increases the processing speed of the system for many applications. Processor clock frequency has increased more rapidly than external memory speed, except in the recent past, a microprocessor is a general purpose system. Several specialized processing devices have followed from the technology, A digital signal processor is specialized for signal processing, graphics processing units are processors designed primarily for realtime rendering of 3D images
10.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
11.
Computer memory
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In computing, memory refers to the computer hardware devices involved to store information for immediate use in a computer, it is synonymous with the term primary storage. Computer memory operates at a speed, for example random-access memory, as a distinction from storage that provides slow-to-access program and data storage. If needed, contents of the memory can be transferred to secondary storage. An archaic synonym for memory is store, there are two main kinds of semiconductor memory, volatile and non-volatile. Examples of non-volatile memory are flash memory and ROM, PROM, EPROM and EEPROM memory, most semiconductor memory is organized into memory cells or bistable flip-flops, each storing one bit. Flash memory organization includes both one bit per cell and multiple bits per cell. The memory cells are grouped into words of fixed word length, each word can be accessed by a binary address of N bit, making it possible to store 2 raised by N words in the memory. This implies that processor registers normally are not considered as memory, since they only store one word, typical secondary storage devices are hard disk drives and solid-state drives. In the early 1940s, memory technology oftenly permit a capacity of a few bytes, the next significant advance in computer memory came with acoustic delay line memory, developed by J. Presper Eckert in the early 1940s. Delay line memory would be limited to a capacity of up to a few hundred thousand bits to remain efficient, two alternatives to the delay line, the Williams tube and Selectron tube, originated in 1946, both using electron beams in glass tubes as means of storage. Using cathode ray tubes, Fred Williams would invent the Williams tube, the Williams tube would prove more capacious than the Selectron tube and less expensive. The Williams tube would prove to be frustratingly sensitive to environmental disturbances. Efforts began in the late 1940s to find non-volatile memory, jay Forrester, Jan A. Rajchman and An Wang developed magnetic core memory, which allowed for recall of memory after power loss. Magnetic core memory would become the dominant form of memory until the development of transistor-based memory in the late 1960s, developments in technology and economies of scale have made possible so-called Very Large Memory computers. The term memory when used with reference to computers generally refers to Random Access Memory or RAM, volatile memory is computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information. Most modern semiconductor volatile memory is either static RAM or dynamic RAM, SRAM retains its contents as long as the power is connected and is easy for interfacing, but uses six transistors per bit. SRAM is not worthwhile for desktop system memory, where DRAM dominates, SRAM is commonplace in small embedded systems, which might only need tens of kilobytes or less. Forthcoming volatile memory technologies that aim at replacing or competing with SRAM and DRAM include Z-RAM and A-RAM, non-volatile memory is computer memory that can retain the stored information even when not powered
12.
Bus (computing)
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In computer architecture, a bus is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This expression covers all related components and software, including communication protocols. Modern computer buses can use both parallel and bit serial connections, and can be wired in either a multidrop or daisy chain topology, or connected by switched hubs, as in the case of USB. An early computer might contain a hand-wired CPU of vacuum tubes, a drum for main memory. In both examples, computer buses of one form or another move data between all of these devices, in most traditional computer architectures, the CPU and main memory tend to be tightly coupled. In most cases, the CPU and memory share signalling characteristics, the bus connecting the CPU and memory is one of the defining characteristics of the system, and often referred to simply as the system bus. It is possible to allow peripherals to communicate with memory in the same fashion and this is commonly accomplished through some sort of standardized electrical connector, several of these forming the expansion bus or local bus. However, as the differences between the CPU and peripherals varies widely, some solution is generally needed to ensure that peripherals do not slow overall system performance. Many CPUs feature a set of pins similar to those for communicating with memory. Others use smart controllers to place the data directly in memory, most modern systems combine both solutions, where appropriate. As the number of potential peripherals grew, using a card for every peripheral became increasingly untenable. This has led to the introduction of bus systems designed specifically to support multiple peripherals, common examples are the SATA ports in modern computers, which allow a number of hard drives to be connected without the need for a card. However, these systems are generally too expensive to implement in low-end devices. This has led to the development of a number of low-performance bus systems for these solutions. All such examples may be referred to as peripheral buses, although this terminology is not universal, in modern systems the performance difference between the CPU and main memory has grown so great that increasing amounts of high-speed memory is built directly into the CPU, known as a cache. These system buses are used to communicate with most other peripherals, through adaptors. Such systems are more similar to multicomputers, communicating over a bus rather than a network. In these cases, expansion buses are entirely separate and no longer share any architecture with their host CPU, what would have formerly been a system bus is now often known as a front-side bus
13.
Disk storage
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Disk storage is a general category of storage mechanisms where data are recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is a device implementing such a storage mechanism, notable types are the hard disk drive containing a non-removable disk, the floppy disk drive and its removable floppy disk, and various optical disc drives and associated optical disc media. Audio information was recorded by analog methods. Similarly the first video disc used a recording method. In the music industry, analog recording has mostly replaced by digital optical technology where the data are recorded in a digital format with optical information. The first commercial digital disk storage device was the IBM350 which shipped in 1956 as a part of the IBM305 RAMAC computing system, the random-access, low-density storage of disks was developed to complement the already used sequential-access, high-density storage provided by tape drives using magnetic tape. Disk storage is now used in computer storage and consumer electronic storage, e. g. audio CDs and video discs. Digital disk drives are block storage devices, each disk is divided into logical blocks. Blocks are addressed using their logical block addresses, read from or writing to disk happens at the granularity of blocks. Originally the disk capacity was low and has been improved in one of several ways. Improvements in mechanical design and manufacture allowed smaller and more precise heads, advancements in data compression methods permitted more information to be stored in each of the individual sectors. The drive stores data onto cylinders, heads, and sectors, the sectors unit is the smallest size of data to be stored in a hard disk drive and each file will have many sectors units assigned to it. The smallest entity in a CD is called a frame, which consists of 33 bytes, the other nine bytes consist of eight CIRC error-correction bytes and one subcode byte used for control and display. The information is sent from the processor to the BIOS into a chip controlling the data transfer. This is then sent out to the drive via a multi-wire connector. Once the data are received onto the board of the drive. The data are passed to a chip on the circuit board that controls the access to the drive. The drive is divided into sectors of data stored onto one of the sides of one of the internal disks, an HDD with two disks internally will typically store data on all four surfaces
14.
Hard disk drive
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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 manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of storage, retaining stored data even when powered off. Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs became the dominant secondary storage device for computers by the early 1960s. Continuously improved, HDDs have maintained this position into the era of servers. More than 200 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation most current units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, as of 2016, HDD production is growing, although unit shipments and sales revenues are declining. While SSDs have higher cost per bit, SSDs are replacing HDDs where speed, power consumption, small size, the primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000, the two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3. 5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2. 5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA, SATA, Hard disk drives were introduced in 1956, as data storage for an IBM real-time transaction processing computer and were developed for use with general-purpose mainframe and minicomputers. The first IBM drive, the 350 RAMAC in 1956, was approximately the size of two medium-sized refrigerators and stored five million six-bit characters on a stack of 50 disks. In 1962 the IBM350 RAMAC disk storage unit was superseded by the IBM1301 disk storage unit, cylinder-mode read/write operations were supported, and the heads flew about 250 micro-inches above the platter surface. Motion of the head array depended upon a binary system of hydraulic actuators which assured repeatable positioning. The 1301 cabinet was about the size of three home refrigerators placed side by side, storing the equivalent of about 21 million eight-bit bytes, access time was about a quarter of a second. Also in 1962, IBM introduced the model 1311 disk drive, users could buy additional packs and interchange them as needed, much like reels of magnetic tape. Later models of removable pack drives, from IBM and others, became the norm in most computer installations, non-removable HDDs were called fixed disk drives. Some high-performance HDDs were manufactured with one head per track so that no time was lost physically moving the heads to a track, known as fixed-head or head-per-track disk drives they were very expensive and are no longer in production. In 1973, IBM introduced a new type of HDD code-named Winchester and its primary distinguishing feature was that the disk heads were not withdrawn completely from the stack of disk platters when the drive was powered down. Instead, the heads were allowed to land on an area of the disk surface upon spin-down
15.
Optical disc drive
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Some drives can only read from certain discs, but recent drives can both read and record, also called burners or writers. Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are common types of media which can be read. Optical disc drives that are no longer in production include CD-ROM drive, CD writer drive, combo drive, as of 2015, DVD writer drive supporting all existing recordable and rewritable DVD formats is the most common for desktop PCs and laptops. There are also the DVD-ROM drive, BD-ROM drive, Blu-ray Disc combo drive and they are also very commonly used in computers to read software and consumer media distributed on disc, and to record discs for archival and data exchange purposes. Floppy disk drives, with capacity of 1, USB flash drives, high-capacity, small, and inexpensive, are suitable where read/write capability is required. Large backups are often made on external hard drives, as their price has dropped to a level making this viable. The first laser disc, demonstrated in 1972, was the Laservision 12-inch video disc, the video signal was stored as an analog format like a video cassette. The first digitally recorded optical disc was a 5-inch audio compact disc in a format created by Sony. The CD-ROM format was developed by Sony and Denon, introduced in 1984, as an extension of Compact Disc Digital Audio, the CD-ROM has a storage capacity of 650 MB. Also in 1984, Sony introduced a LaserDisc data storage format, in 1987, Sony demonstrated the erasable and rewritable 5. 25-inch optical drive. The first Blu-Ray prototype was unveiled by Sony in October 2000, technically Blu-ray Disc also required a thinner layer for the narrower beam and shorter wavelength blue laser. The first BD-ROM players were shipped in mid-June 2006, the first Blu-ray Disc titles were released by Sony and MGM on June 20,2006. The first mass-market Blu-ray Disc rewritable drive for the PC was the BWU-100A, initially, CD-type lasers with a wavelength of 780 nm were used. For DVDs, the wavelength was reduced to 650 nm, two main servomechanisms are used, the first to maintain the proper distance between lens and disc, to ensure the laser beam is focused as a small laser spot on the disc. The second servo moves the head along the discs radius, keeping the beam on the track. Optical disk media are read beginning at the radius to the outer edge. This is detected by photodiodes that create corresponding electrical signals, an optical disk recorder encodes data onto a recordable CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, or BD-R disc by selectively heating parts of an organic dye layer with a laser. This changes the reflectivity of the dye, thereby creating marks that can be read like the pits, for recordable discs, the process is permanent and the media can be written to only once
16.
Floppy disk
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Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive. Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch media and later in 5¼-inch and 3½-inch sizes, were a form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s into the mid-2000s. These formats are usually handled by older equipment and these disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term floppy disk appeared in print as early as 1970, in 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5¼-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs, there were competing floppy disk formats, with hard- and soft-sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5¼-inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, the most common capacity of the 5¼-inch format in DOS-based PCs was 360 kB and in 1984 IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual-sided floppy disk along with its PC-AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double-density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and these disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB DSED diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models, throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large, as the quality of recording media grew. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-, 2½-, 3-, 3½-, the large market share of the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by 3½-inch disks, by the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. Floppy disks became ubiquitous during the 1980s and 1990s in their use with computers to distribute software, transfer data. Before hard disks became affordable to the population, floppy disks were often used to store a computers operating system. Most home computers from that period have a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, by the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were a five billion standard floppy disks in use. Then, distribution of packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROMs, DVDs. External USB-based floppy disk drives are available, many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such drives
17.
Computer keyboard
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In computing, a computer keyboard is a typewriter-style device which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys to act as a mechanical lever or electronic switch. Following the decline of punch cards and paper tape, interaction via teleprinter-style keyboards became the input device for computers. A keyboard typically has characters engraved or printed on the keys, however, to produce some symbols requires pressing and holding several keys simultaneously or in sequence. While most keyboard keys produce letters, numbers or signs, other keys or simultaneous key presses can produce actions or execute computer commands. In normal usage, the keyboard is used as a text entry interface to type text and numbers into a word processor, in a modern computer, the interpretation of key presses is generally left to the software. A computer keyboard distinguishes each physical key from every other and reports all key presses to the controlling software, Keyboards are also used for computer gaming, either with regular keyboards or by using keyboards with special gaming features, which can expedite frequently used keystroke combinations. A keyboard is used to give commands to the operating system of a computer, such as Windows Control-Alt-Delete combination. A command-line interface is a type of user interface operated entirely through a keyboard and it was through such devices that modern computer keyboards inherited their layouts. Earlier models were developed separately by individuals such as Royal Earl House, earlier, Herman Hollerith developed the first keypunch devices, which soon evolved to include keys for text and number entry akin to normal typewriters by the 1930s. From the 1940s until the late 1960s, typewriters were the means of data entry. The keyboard remained the primary, most integrated computer peripheral well into the era of personal computing until the introduction of the mouse as a device in 1984. By this time, text-only user interfaces with sparse graphics gave way to comparatively graphics-rich icons on screen, One factor determining the size of a keyboard is the presence of duplicate keys, such as a separate numeric keyboard, for convenience. A keyboard with few keys is called a keypad, another factor determining the size of a keyboard is the size and spacing of the keys. Reduction is limited by the consideration that the keys must be large enough to be easily pressed by fingers. Alternatively a tool is used for pressing small keys, standard alphanumeric keyboards have keys that are on three-quarter inch centers, and have a key travel of at least 0.150 inches. Desktop computer keyboards, such as the 101-key US traditional keyboards or the 104-key Windows keyboards, include characters, punctuation symbols, numbers. The internationally common 102/104 key keyboards have a left shift key. Also the enter key is usually shaped differently, computer keyboards are similar to electric-typewriter keyboards but contain additional keys, such as the command or Windows keys
18.
Computer mouse
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A computer mouse is a pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, physically, a mouse consists of an object held in ones hand, with one or more buttons. Mice often also other elements, such as touch surfaces and wheels. The earliest known publication of the mouse as referring to a computer pointing device is in Bill Englishs July 1965 publication. The plural for the rodent is always mice in modern usage. The plural of a mouse is mouses and mice according to most dictionaries. The first recorded usage is mice, the online Oxford Dictionaries cites a 1984 use. The trackball, a pointing device, was invented in 1944 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called Comprehensive Display System. Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service, Benjamins project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented what they called a ball for this purpose. The device was patented in 1947, but only a prototype using a ball rolling on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built, and the device was kept as a military secret. Another early trackball was built by British electrical engineer Kenyon Taylor in collaboration with Tom Cranston, Taylor was part of the original Ferranti Canada, working on the Royal Canadian Navys DATAR system in 1952. DATAR was similar in concept to Benjamins display, the trackball used four disks to pick up motion, two each for the X and Y directions. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and contacts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, by counting the pulses, the physical movement of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks and sent the data to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulation radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball and it was not patented, since it was a secret military project. Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute has been credited in published books by Thierry Bardini, Paul Ceruzzi, Howard Rheingold, Engelbart was also recognized as such in various obituary titles after his death in July 2013. That November, while attending a conference on computer graphics in Reno, Nevada, Engelbart began to ponder how to adapt the underlying principles of the planimeter to X-Y coordinate input
19.
Computer monitor
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A computer monitor or a computer display is an electronic visual display for computers. A monitor usually comprises the display device, circuitry, casing, the display device in modern monitors is typically a thin film transistor liquid crystal display or a flat panel LED display, while older monitors used a cathode ray tubes. It can be connected to the computer via VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, LVDS or other proprietary connectors, originally, computer monitors were used for data processing while television receivers were used for entertainment. From the 1980s onwards, computers have used for both data processing and entertainment, while televisions have implemented some computer functionality. The common aspect ratio of televisions, and computer monitors, has changed from 4,3 to 16,10, to 16,9. Early electronic computers were fitted with a panel of light bulbs where the state of each particular bulb would indicate the state of a particular register bit inside the computer. This allowed the operating the computer to monitor the internal state of the machine. As early monitors were only capable of displaying a limited amount of information. Instead, a printer was the primary output device, while the monitor was limited to keeping track of the programs operation. Multiple technologies have used for computer monitors. Until the 21st century most used cathode ray tubes but they have largely superseded by LCD monitors. The first computer monitors used cathode ray tubes, high-resolution CRT displays were developed for specialized military, industrial and scientific applications but they were far too costly for general use. Either computer could be connected to the terminals of an ordinary color TV set or used with a purpose-made CRT color monitor for optimum resolution. In 1984 IBM introduced the Enhanced Graphics Adapter which was capable of producing 16 colors and had a resolution of 640 x 350, by the end of the 1980s color CRT monitors that could clearly display 1024 x 768 pixels were widely available and increasingly affordable. During the following decade maximum display resolutions gradually increased and prices continued to fall, CRT technology remained dominant in the PC monitor market into the new millennium partly because it was cheaper to produce and offered viewing angles close to 180 degrees. CRTs still offer some image quality advantages over LCDs but improvements to the latter have made much less obvious. There are multiple technologies that have used to implement liquid crystal displays. Commonly, the laptop would be offered with an assortment of display options at increasing price points, monochrome
20.
Computer speakers
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Computer speakers, or multimedia speakers, are speakers sold for use with computers, although usually capable of other audio uses, e. g. for an MP3 player. Most such speakers have an amplifier and consequently require a power source. The signal input connector is often a 3.5 mm jack plug, RCA connectors are used. Battery-powered wireless Bluetooth speakers require no connections at all, most computers have speakers of low power and quality built in, when external speakers are connected they disable the built-in speakers. Altec Lansing claims to have created the computer market in 1990. Computer speakers range widely in quality and in price, computer speakers sometimes packaged with computer systems are small, plastic, and have mediocre sound quality. Some computer speakers have equalization features such as bass and treble controls, more sophisticated computer speakers can have a subwoofer unit, to enhance bass output. The larger subwoofer enclosure usually contains the amplifiers for the subwoofer, some computer displays have rather basic speakers built-in. Laptop computers have built-in integrated speakers, usually small and of restricted sound quality to conserve space, instead of using a computer speaker for better sound, a computer can be connected to any external sound system, typically a high-power high-quality setup. It stores energy from the USB connection during quieter periods, delivering power for the peaks. The module is claimed to require less power most of the time, increasing laptop computer battery endurance, and delivering clean, unclipped sound peaks
21.
Printer (computing)
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In computing, a printer is a peripheral which makes a persistent human-readable representation of graphics or text on paper or similar physical media. The worlds first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine, the plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, by 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed, expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988 offered the same advantages as laser printer in terms of flexibility, inkjet systems rapidly displaced dot matrix and daisy wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s high-quality printers of this sort had fallen under the price point. Even the desire for printed output for offline reading while on mass transit or aircraft has been displaced by e-book readers, today, traditional printers are being used more for special purposes, like printing photographs or artwork, and are no longer a must-have peripheral. Starting around 2010, 3D printing became an area of intense interest and these devices are in their earliest stages of development and have not yet become commonplace. Personal printers are designed to support individual users, and may be connected to only a single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs, requiring minimal setup time to produce a copy of a given document. However, they are generally slow devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute, however, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on cards or from digital cameras. Networked or shared printers are designed for high-volume, high-speed printing and they are usually shared by many users on a network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm, a virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer. It is called a printer by analogy with a printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar process of depositing a layer of ink on paper. The choice of print technology has an effect on the cost of the printer and cost of operation, speed, quality and permanence of documents. Some printer technologies dont work with certain types of physical media, cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper with toner anchorage so that alterations may be detected. The machine-readable lower portion of a cheque must be printed using MICR toner or ink, banks and other clearing houses employ automation equipment that relies on the magnetic flux from these specially printed characters to function properly. The following printing technologies are found in modern printers, A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text
22.
Horizontal and vertical
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The usage of the inter-related terms horizontal and vertical as well as their symmetries and asymmetries vary with context. In astronomy, geography, and related sciences and contexts, a passing by a given point is said to be vertical if it is locally aligned with the local gravity vector at that point. In general, something that is vertical can be drawn from up to down, girard Desargues defined the vertical to be perpendicular to the horizon in his Perspective of 1636. The word horizontal is derived from horizon, whereas vertical originates in the late Latin verticalis, in the context of a two-dimensional orthogonal Cartesian coordinate system on a Euclidean plane, to say that a line is horizontal or vertical, an initial designation has to be made. One can start off by designating the vertical direction, usually labelled the Y direction, the horizontal direction, usually labelled the X direction, is then automatically determined. Or, one can do it the way around, i. e. nominate the x-axis. There is no reason to choose the horizontal over the vertical as the initial designation. The following hold in the case, a) Through any point P in the plane, there is one and only one vertical line within the plane and one. This symmetry breaks down as one moves to the three-dimensional case, b) A vertical line is any line parallel to the vertical direction. A horizontal line is any line normal to a vertical line, c) Horizontal lines do not cross each other. D) Vertical lines do not cross each other, not all of these elementary geometric facts are true in the 3-D context. In the three-dimensional case, the situation is complicated as now one has horizontal and vertical planes in addition to horizontal and vertical lines. Consider a point P and designate a direction through P as vertical, a plane which contains P and is normal to the designated direction is the horizontal plane at P. Any plane going through P, normal to the plane is a vertical plane at P. Through any point P, there is one and only one horizontal plane and this is a new feature that emerges in three dimensions. The symmetry that exists in the case no longer holds. In physics, in engineering, and in construction, the designated as vertical is usually that along which a plumb-bob hangs. Alternatively, a level that exploits the buoyancy of an air bubble
23.
Apple II
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The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. It was introduced in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire by Jobs and was the first consumer product sold by Apple Computer and it is the first model in a series of computers which were produced until Apple IIe production ceased in November 1993. The Apple II marks Apples first launch of a computer aimed at a consumer market – branded towards American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. Along with the PET2001 and the TRS-80, Byte magazine referred to these as the 1977 Trinity of personal computing. The Apple II had the feature of being able to display color graphics. By 1976, Steve Jobs had convinced the product designer Jerry Manock to create the shell for the Apple II – a smooth case inspired by kitchen appliances that would conceal the internal mechanics. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas, printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland, the original retail price of the computer was $1,298 and $2,638. To reflect the color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing has rainbow stripes. Perhaps most significantly, the Apple II was a catalyst for personal computers across many industries, the Apple II used a multiplicity of idiosyncratic engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs. This arrangement simultaneously eliminated the need for a separate circuit for the DRAM chips. Similarly, in the graphics mode, color is determined by pixel position and can thus be implemented in software. This also allows for subpixel font rendering since orange and blue pixels appear half a pixel-width farther to the right on the screen than green, the Apple II at first used data cassette storage like most other microcomputers of the time. In 1978 the company introduced an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II interface, created by Wozniak, is regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components. The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniaks designs, with a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM, he created a functional floppy-disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations. The cost of such terminals could easily exceed the price of the computer itself, the Apple IIs PCB underwent several revisions as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it. The earliest version was known as Revision 0, and the first 6000 units shipped used it, later revisions added a color killer circuit to prevent color fringing when the computer was in text mode, as well as modifications to improve the reliability of cassette I/O. Revision 0 Apple IIs powered up in a mode and had garbage on screen. This was eliminated on the later board revisions, Revision 0 Apple IIs could display only four colors, but Wozniak was later able to generate 16 in low-res mode
24.
Minicomputer
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A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold for much less than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. The class formed a group with its own software architectures. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation, many were sold indirectly to Original Equipment Manufacturers for final end use application. During the two decade lifetime of the class, almost 100 companies formed and only a half dozen remained. They usually took up one or a few 19-inch rack cabinets, the definition of minicomputer is vague with the consequence that there are a number of candidates for the first minicomputer. An early and highly successful minicomputer was Digital Equipment Corporations 12-bit PDP-8, later versions of the PDP-8 took advantage of small-scale integrated circuits. The important precursors of the PDP-8 include the PDP-5, LINC, the TX-0, the TX-2, DEC gave rise to a number of minicomputer companies along Massachusetts Route 128, including Data General, Wang Laboratories, Apollo Computer, and Prime Computer. Minicomputers were also known as midrange computers and they grew to have relatively high processing power and capacity. They were used in manufacturing process control, telephone switching and to control laboratory equipment, in the 1970s, they were the hardware that was used to launch the computer-aided design industry and other similar industries where a smaller dedicated system was needed. The 7400 series of TTL integrated circuits started appearing in minicomputers in the late 1960s, the 74181 arithmetic logic unit was commonly used in the CPU data paths. Each 74181 had a bus width of four bits, hence the popularity of bit-slice architecture, some scientific computers, such as the Nicolet 1080, would use the 7400 series in groups of five ICs for their uncommon twenty bits architecture. Starting in the 1980s, many minicomputers used VLSI circuits, the result was that minicomputers and computer terminals were replaced by networked workstations, file servers and PCs in some installations, beginning in the latter half of the 1980s. Also, the Microsoft Windows series of operating systems, beginning with Windows NT, now included server versions that supported preemptive multitasking, Digital Equipment Corporation was once the leading minicomputer manufacturer, at one time the second-largest computer company after IBM. DEC was sold to Compaq in 1998, while Data General was acquired by EMC Corporation, today only a few proprietary minicomputer architectures survive. The IBM System/38 operating system, which introduced many advanced concepts, realising the importance of the myriad lines of legacy code written, AS stands for Application System. Great efforts were made by IBM to enable programs written for the System/34. The AS/400 was replaced by the iSeries, which was replaced by the System i. In 2008, the System i was replaced by the IBM Power Systems, by contrast, competing proprietary computing architectures from the early 1980s, such as DECs VAX, Wang VS and Hewlett Packards HP3000 have long been discontinued without a compatible upgrade path
25.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
26.
Olivetti
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Olivetti S. p. A. is an Italian manufacturer of typewriters, computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of the Telecom Italia Group since 2003, the first commercial programmable desktop computer, the Programma 101, was produced by Olivetti in 1964 and was a commercial success. The company was founded as a manufacturer by Camillo Olivetti in 1908 in Ivrea. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti, Olivetti opened its first overseas manufacturing plant in 1930, and its Divisumma electric calculator was launched in 1948. Olivetti produced Italys first electronic computer, the transistorised Elea 9003, in 1959, in 1964 the company sold its electronics division to the American company General Electric. It continued to develop new computing products on its own, one of these was Programma 101, in the 1970s and 1980s they were the biggest manufacturer for office machines in Europe and 2nd biggest PC vendor behind IBM in Europe. In 1980 Olivetti is distributed in Indonesia through Dragon Computer & Communication, in 1952, the Museum of Modern Art held an exhibit titled Olivetti, Design in Industry, today, many Olivetti products are still part of the museums permanent collection. Another major show, mounted by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1969, from the 1940s to the 1960s, Olivetti industrial design was led by Marcello Nizzoli, responsible for the Lexicon 80 and the portable Lettera 22. Later, Mario Bellini and Ettore Sottsass directed design, Bellini designed the Programma 101, Divisumma 18 and Logos 68 calculators and the TCV-250 video display terminal, among others. Sottsass designed the Tekne 3 typewriter, Elea 9003 computer, the Praxis 48 typewriter, the Valentine portable typewriter, michele De Lucchi designed the Art Jet 10 inkjet printer and the Gioconda calculator. During the 1970s Olivetti manufactured and sold two ranges of minicomputers, the A series started with the typewriter-sized A4 through to the large A8, and the desk-sized DE500 and DE700 series. George Sowden worked for Olivetti from 1970 until 1990, and designed their first desktop computer, Olivetti L1, in 1991, Sowden won the prestigious ADI Compasso dOro Award for the design of the Olivetti fax OFX420. Olivetti paid attention to more than the importance of design, graphic. Giovanni Pintori was hired by Adriano Olivetti in 1936 to work in the publicity department, Pintori was the creator of the Olivetti logo and many promotional posters used to advertise the company and its products. Those designers also created the Olivetti Synthesis office furniture series which mainly were used to be installed in Olivettis own headquarters, worldwide branch offices, Olivetti also produced some industrial production machinery, including metal working machines of the Horizon series. Olivetti began with mechanical typewriters when the company was founded in 1909, until the mid 1960s they were fully mechanical, and models such as the portable Olivetti Valentine were designed by Ettore Sottsass. With the Tekne/Editor series and Praxis 48, some of the first electromechanical typewriters were introduced, the Editor series was used for speed typing championship competition. The Editor 5 from 1969 was the top model of series, with proportional spacing
27.
Programma 101
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The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is the first commercial programmable desktop computer. Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto and it was launched at the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, volume production started in 1965. A futuristic design for its time, the Programma 101 was priced at $3,200, about 44,000 units were sold, primarily in the US. The Programma 101 was able to calculate the basic four arithmetic functions, plus square root, absolute value and it was equipped with memory registers with features such as clear, transfer, and exchange, plus printing and halt for input. There were 16 jump instructions and 16 conditional jump instructions and its features of conditional jump instructions, an alphanumeric programming language, an internal memory, and a data storage system define it as a computer. Thirty-two label statements were available as destinations for the jump instructions and/or the four start keys, routines on magnetic cards could be used without knowledge of programming. Earlier computers were expensive and could only be used by experts, the P101 was easy and economical, and programs on magnetic cards allowed use without knowing the programming language. Each full register held a 22-digit number with sign and decimal point or 24 instructions each consisting of a letter and its memory consisted of 10 registers, three for operations, two for storage, three for storage and/or program, and two for program only. Five of the registers could be subdivided into half-registers, containing an 11-digit number with sign, when used for programming, each full register stored 24 instructions. So its most distinctive difference from later computers was that its instruction space. It printed programs and results onto a roll of paper tape, programming was similar to assembly language, but simpler, as there were fewer options. It directed the exchange between memory registers and calculation registers, and operations in the registers, instructions occupy one byte, and a magnetic card could hold 120 instructions. In large computers such as the Elea 9003, an instruction occupied 8 bytes,120 instructions occupied nearly 1 Kbytes, the total memory was 20 Kbytes in basic models. The stored programs could be recorded onto plastic cards approximately 10 cm ×20 cm that had a coating on one side. Each card could be recorded on two stripes, enabling it to two programs. The five registers were stored on the card, two registers are dedicated to the code, other three registers can be used for the code or for numbers. A total of 240 bytes of information were electrically stored in magnetostrictive delay-line memory, computation was effected by discrete devices, as there were no microprocessors, and even integrated circuits were in their infancy. Olivetti was famous for its attention to engineering and design aspects, as the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art testify
28.
BASIC
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BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use. In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College in the U. S. state of New Hampshire and they wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, versions of BASIC became widespread on microcomputers in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Microcomputers usually shipped with BASIC, often in the machines firmware, having an easy-to-learn language on these early personal computers allowed small business owners, professionals, hobbyists, and consultants to develop custom software on computers they could afford. In the 2010s, BASIC remains popular in many computing dialects and in new languages influenced by BASIC, before the mid-1960s, the only computers were huge mainframe computers. Users submitted jobs on punched cards or similar media to specialist computer operators, the computer stored these, then used a batch processing system to run this queue of jobs one after another, allowing very high levels of utilization of these expensive machines. As the performance of computing hardware rose through the 1960s, multi-processing was developed and this allowed a mix of batch jobs to be run together, but the real revolution was the development of time-sharing. The original BASIC language was released on May 1,1964 by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, the acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. BASIC was designed to allow students to write computer programs for the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. It was intended specifically for technical users who did not have or want the mathematical background previously expected. Being able to use a computer to support teaching and research was quite novel at the time, the language was based on FORTRAN II, with some influences from ALGOL60 and with additions to make it suitable for timesharing. Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the available free of charge. They also made it available to schools in the Hanover area. In the following years, as dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny. A version was a part of the Pick operating system from 1973 onward. During this period a number of computer games were written in BASIC. A number of these were collected by DEC employee David H. Ahl and he later collected a number of these into book form,101 BASIC Computer Games, published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a computer for education use
29.
Hewlett-Packard
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The Hewlett-Packard Company or shortened to Hewlett-Packard was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company was founded in a garage in Palo Alto by William Bill Redington Hewlett and David Dave Packard. HP was the worlds leading PC manufacturer from 2007 to Q22013 and it specialized in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. HP also had services and consulting business around its products and partner products.4 billion in 2008, in November 2009, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com, with the deal closing on April 12,2010. On April 28,2010, HP announced the buyout of Palm, on September 2,2010, HP won its bidding war for 3PAR with a $33 a share offer, which Dell declined to match. On October 6,2014, Hewlett-Packard announced plans to split the PC and printers business from its enterprise products, the split closed on November 1,2015, and resulted in two publicly traded companies, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. William Redington Hewlett and David Packard graduated with degrees in engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard. In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard in Packards garage with a capital investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett, HP incorporated on August 18,1947, and went public on November 6,1957. Of the many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product was an audio oscillator. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200, the Model 200 series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years. They worked on technology and artillery shell fuses during World War II. Hewlett-Packards HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use, instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices. HP partnered in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products, the products were not a huge success, as there were high costs in building HP-looking products in Japan. HP and Yokogawa formed a joint venture in 1963 to market HP products in Japan, HP bought Yokogawa Electrics share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999. HP spun off a company, Dynac, to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo hp could be turned upside down to be a reverse image of the logo dy of the new company
30.
Read-only memory
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Read-only memory is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM can only be modified slowly, with difficulty, or not at all, strictly, read-only memory refers to memory that is hard-wired, such as diode matrix and the later mask ROM, which cannot be changed after manufacture. Although discrete circuits can be altered in principle, integrated circuits cannot and that such memory can never be changed is a disadvantage in many applications, as bugs and security issues cannot be fixed, and new features cannot be added. More recently, ROM has come to include memory that is read-only in normal operation, the simplest type of solid-state ROM is as old as the semiconductor technology itself. Combinational logic gates can be joined manually to map n-bit address input onto arbitrary values of m-bit data output, with the invention of the integrated circuit came mask ROM. In mask ROM, the data is encoded in the circuit. This leads to a number of disadvantages, It is only economical to buy mask ROM in large quantities. The turnaround time between completing the design for a mask ROM and receiving the finished product is long, for the same reason, mask ROM is impractical for R&D work since designers frequently need to modify the contents of memory as they refine a design. If a product is shipped with faulty mask ROM, the way to fix it is to recall the product. Subsequent developments have addressed these shortcomings, PROM, invented in 1956, allowed users to program its contents exactly once by physically altering its structure with the application of high-voltage pulses. This addressed problems 1 and 2 above, since a company can order a large batch of fresh PROM chips. The 1971 invention of EPROM essentially solved problem 3, since EPROM can be reset to its unprogrammed state by exposure to strong ultraviolet light. All of these technologies improved the flexibility of ROM, but at a significant cost-per-chip, rewriteable technologies were envisioned as replacements for mask ROM. The most recent development is NAND flash, also invented at Toshiba, as of 2007, NAND has partially achieved this goal by offering throughput comparable to hard disks, higher tolerance of physical shock, extreme miniaturization, and much lower power consumption. Every stored-program computer may use a form of storage to store the initial program that runs when the computer is powered on or otherwise begins execution. Likewise, every non-trivial computer needs some form of memory to record changes in its state as it executes. Forms of read-only memory were employed as non-volatile storage for programs in most early stored-program computers, consequently, ROM could be implemented at a lower cost-per-bit than RAM for many years. Most home computers of the 1980s stored a BASIC interpreter or operating system in ROM as other forms of storage such as magnetic disk drives were too costly
31.
LED
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A light-emitting diode is a two-lead semiconductor light source. It is a p–n junction diode, which emits light when activated, when a suitable voltage is applied to the leads, electrons are able to recombine with electron holes within the device, releasing energy in the form of photons. This effect is called electroluminescence, and the color of the light is determined by the band gap of the semiconductor. LEDs are typically small and integrated optical components may be used to shape the radiation pattern, appearing as practical electronic components in 1962, the earliest LEDs emitted low-intensity infrared light. Infrared LEDs are still used as transmitting elements in remote-control circuits. The first visible-light LEDs were also of low intensity and limited to red, modern LEDs are available across the visible, ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness. Early LEDs were often used as indicator lamps for electronic devices and they were soon packaged into numeric readouts in the form of seven-segment displays and were commonly seen in digital clocks. Recent developments in LEDs permit them to be used in environmental, LEDs have allowed new displays and sensors to be developed, while their high switching rates are also used in advanced communications technology. LEDs have many advantages over incandescent light sources including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, improved physical robustness, smaller size, and faster switching. Light-emitting diodes are now used in applications as diverse as aviation lighting, automotive headlamps, advertising, general lighting, traffic signals, camera flashes, as of 2017, LED lights home room lighting are as cheap or cheaper than compact fluorescent lamp sources of comparable output. They are also more energy efficient and, arguably, have fewer environmental concerns linked to their disposal. Electroluminescence as a phenomenon was discovered in 1907 by the British experimenter H. J. Round of Marconi Labs, using a crystal of silicon carbide, russian inventor Oleg Losev reported creation of the first LED in 1927. His research was distributed in Soviet, German and British scientific journals, rubin Braunstein of the Radio Corporation of America reported on infrared emission from gallium arsenide and other semiconductor alloys in 1955. Braunstein observed infrared emission generated by simple diode structures using gallium antimonide, GaAs, indium phosphide, in 1957, Braunstein further demonstrated that the rudimentary devices could be used for non-radio communication across a short distance. As noted by Kroemer Braunstein …had set up a simple optical communications link, the emitted light was detected by a PbS diode some distance away. This signal was fed into an amplifier and played back by a loudspeaker. Intercepting the beam stopped the music and we had a great deal of fun playing with this setup. This setup presaged the use of LEDs for optical communication applications, by October 1961, they had demonstrated efficient light emission and signal coupling between a GaAs p-n junction light emitter and an electrically-isolated semiconductor photodetector
32.
TRS-80
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The TRS-80 Micro Computer System is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy/Radio Shack, Z-80 microprocessor and it was one of the earliest mass-produced personal computers. By 1979, the TRS-80 had the largest selection of software in the microcomputer market, until 1982, the TRS-80 was the best-selling PC line, outselling the Apple II series by a factor of 5 according to one analysis. In mid-1980, the broadly compatible TRS-80 Model III was released, the Model I was discontinued shortly after, primarily due to stricter FCC regulations on the radio-frequency interference it caused in surrounding electronics. In 1983, the Model III was in turn succeeded by the compatible Model 4, in the mid-1970s, Tandy Corporations Radio Shack division was a successful American chain of more than 3,000 electronics stores. After buyer Don French purchased a MITS Altair kit computer, he began designing his own, although the design did not impress Roach, the idea of selling a microcomputer did. When the two men visited National Semiconductor in California in mid-1976, Steve Leiningers expertise on the SC/MP microprocessor impressed them, the company envisioned a kit, but Leininger persuaded the others that because too many people cant solder, a preassembled computer would be better. Many opposed the project, one executive told French, Dont waste my time—we cant sell computers, as the popularity of CB radio—at one point comprising more than 20% of Radio Shacks sales—declined, however, the company sought new products. In February 1977 they showed their prototype, running a simple tax-accounting program, to Charles Tandy, after the demonstration Tandy revealed that he had already leaked the computers existence to the press, so the project was approved. MITS sold 1,000 Altairs in February 1975, and was selling 10,000 a year. Leininger and French suggested that Radio Shack could sell 50,000 computers, Roach persuaded Tandy to agree to build 3, 500—the number of Radio Shack stores—so that each store could use a computer for inventory purposes if they did not sell. Having spent less than US$150,000 on development, Radio Shack announced the TRS-80 at a New York City press conference on August 3,1977. It cost US$399, or US$599 with a 12 monitor and a Radio Shack tape recorder as datacassette storage, the company hoped that the new computer would help Radio Shack sell higher-priced products, and improve its schlocky image among customers. Despite the internal skepticism, Radio Shack aggressively entered the market, the company advertised The $599 personal computer as the most important, useful, exciting, electronic product of our time. The company announced plans to be selling by Christmas a range of peripherals and software for the TRS-80, began shipping computers by September, the first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with hobbyists, home users, and small-businesses, Tandy Corporations leading position in what Byte Magazine called the 1977 Trinity had much to do with Tandys retailing the computer through more than 3,000 of its Radio Shack storefronts. Notable features of the original TRS-80 included its full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, small size, its floating-point BASIC programming language, a monitor. The pre-release price was US$500 and a US$50 deposit was required, by 1980 InfoWorld described Radio Shack as the dominant supplier of small computers
33.
Commodore PET
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The Commodore PET is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. The first model, which was named the PET2001, was the personal computer ever made available to retail consumers, after the Apple II. In the 1970s Commodore was one of many companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments chips. Commodore responded to this by searching for a set they could purchase outright. At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end, in September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniaks Apple II prototype, when Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs offer too expensive. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, Bill Seiler, and John Feagans create a computer in time for the June 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, tramiels son, Leonard, helped design the PETSCII graphic characters and acted as quality control. The result was the first all-in-one home computer, the PET and its 6502 processor controlled the screen, keyboard, cassette tape recorders and any peripherals connected to one of the computers several expansion ports. The machine also included a built-in Datasette for data storage located on the front of the case, the data transfer rate to cassette tape was 1500 baud, but the data was recorded to tape twice for safety, giving an effective rate of 750 baud. The PET2001 was announced at the Winter CES in January 1977, however, the PET was back-ordered for months and to ease deliveries, early in 1978 Commodore decided to cancel the 4 kB version. However, this took six months to finally happen, during which time Microsoft lost money. At the end of the year, the company was saved by Apples decision to license Microsoft BASIC for the Apple II line. The key tops also tended to rub off easily, reliability was fairly poor, although that was not atypical of many early microcomputers. Because of the keyboard on the PET, external replacement ones quickly appeared. On the other hand, Commodore was a year behind Apple, in 1979, Commodore replaced the original PET2001 with an improved model known as the 2001-N. The new machine used a standard green-phosphor monitor in place of the blue in the original 2001. It now had a conventional, full-sized keyboard and no longer sported the built-in cassette recorder, the kernel ROM was upgraded to add support for Commodores newly introduced disk drive line. It was offered in 8kB, 16kB, or 32kB models as the 2001-N8, 2001-N16, the 2001-N switched to using conventional DRAM instead of the 6550 SRAM in the original model. PET 2001-8Ns had eight 2108 DRAMs and 2001-16Ns used sixteen 2108s, the PET4016 used eight 4116 chips
34.
Home computer
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Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, however, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporaneous business computers. Their most common uses were playing games, but they were also regularly used for word processing, doing homework. Home computers were usually not electronic kits, home computers were already manufactured in stylish metal or plastic enclosures. There were, however, commercial kits like the Sinclair ZX80 which were home and home-built computers since the purchaser could assemble the unit from a kit. For example, using a typical 1980s home computer as a home automation appliance would require the computer to be powered on at all times. Personal finance and database use required tedious data entry, by contrast, advertisements in the specialty computer press often simply listed specifications. Since most systems shipped with the BASIC programming language included on the system ROM, many users found programming to be a fun and rewarding experience, and an excellent introduction to the world of digital technology. Often the only difference may be the outlet through which they are purchased. Another change from the computer era is that the once-common endeavour of writing ones own software programs has almost vanished from home computer use. As early as 1965, some projects such as Jim Sutherlands ECHO IV explored the possible utility of a computer in the home. In 1969, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer was marketed as a gift item, and would have inaugurated the era of home computing. Computers became affordable for the public in the 1970s due to the mass production of the microprocessor starting in 1971. Early microcomputers such as the Altair 8800 had front-mounted switches and diagnostic lights to control and indicate internal system status, while two early home computers could be bought either in kit form or assembled, most home computers were only sold pre-assembled. The keyboard - a feature lacking on the Altair - was usually built into the case as the motherboard. Ports for plug-in peripheral devices such as a display, cassette tape recorders, joysticks. Usually the manufacturer would sell peripheral devices designed to be compatible with their computers as extra cost accessories, peripherals were not often interchangeable between different brands of home computer, or even between successive models of the same brand. To save the cost of a monitor, the home computer would often connect through an RF modulator to the family TV set
35.
Byte (magazine)
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Byte magazine was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Coverage was in-depth with much detail, rather than user-oriented. Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013, Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with a yearly subscription price of $10. In 1975 Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of 73 and his ex-wife, on May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August. Carl Helmers published a series of six articles in 1974 that detailed the design and construction of his Experimenters Computer System, in January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers. The last issue was published on May 12,1975 and in June the subscribers were mailed a notice announcing Byte magazine, carl wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter, and described his new job as editor of Byte magazine. I got a note in the mail about two weeks ago from Wayne Green, publisher of 73 Magazine essentially saying hello and why dont you come up, the net result of a follow up is the decision to create BYTE magazine using the facilities of Green Publishing Inc. I will end up with the focus for the magazine. Virginia Londner Green had returned to 73 in the December 1974 issue, the first five issues of Byte were published by Green Publishing and the name was changed to Byte Publications starting with the February 1976 issue. Carl Helmers was a co-owner of Byte Publications, the first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Wayne came to work and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out, the February 1976 issue of Byte has a short story about the move. After a start which reads like a light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, Byte magazine finally has moved into separate offices of its own. Wayne Green was not happy about losing Byte magazine so he was going to start a new one called Kilobyte, Byte quickly trademarked KILOBYTE as a cartoon series in Byte magazine. The new magazine was called Kilobaud, there was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire. Byte was able to attract advertising and articles from many well-knowns, soon-to-be-well-knowns, articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You. by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, and Sphere appear, early articles in Byte were do-it-yourself electronic or software projects to improve small computers. A continuing feature was Ciarcias Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer, Byte ran Microsofts first advertisement, as Micro-Soft, to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers
36.
IBM Personal Computer
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The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12,1981 and it was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM compatible became an important criterion for sales growth, only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, International Business Machines, one of the worlds largest companies, had a 62% share of the mainframe computer market in 1981. Its share of the computer market, however, had declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. In 1979 BusinessWeek asked, Is IBM just another stodgy, mature company, by 1981 its stock price had declined by 22%. IBMs earnings for the first half the year grew by 5. 3%—one third of the inflation rate—while those of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation grew by more than 35%. B. M, No longer dominates the computer business. IBM wished to avoid the outcome with the new personal computer industry, dominated by the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Tandy Corporations TRS-80. With $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected growth of more than 40% in the early 1980s. The Japanese project, codenamed Go, ended before the 1981 release of the American-designed IBM PC codenamed Chess, whether IBM had waited too long to enter an industry in which Apple and others were already successful was unclear. An observer stated that IBM bringing out a computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance. Successful microcomputer company Vector Graphics fiscal 1980 revenue was $12 million, the company only sold through its internal sales force, had no experience with resellers or retail stores, and did not introduce the first product designed to work with non-IBM equipment until 1980. Another observer claimed that IBM made decisions so slowly that, when tested, as with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development. IBM had to learn how to develop, mass-produce. The potential importance to microcomputers of a company so prestigious, that a saying in American companies stated No one ever got fired for buying IBM, was nonetheless clear. InfoWorld, which described itself as The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, stated that for my grandmother, is far and away the media star, not because of its features, but because it exists at all. When the number eight company in the Fortune 500 enters the field, the influence of a personal computer made by a company whose name has literally come to mean computer to most of the world is hard to contemplate. The editorial acknowledged that some factions in our industry have looked upon IBM as the enemy, desktop sized programmable calculators by Hewlett Packard had evolved into the HP9830 BASIC language computer by 1972. In 1972–1973 a team led by Dr. SCAMP emulated an IBM1130 minicomputer to run APL\1130, in 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP9800 offered only BASIC
37.
IBM PC compatible
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IBM PC compatible computers are those similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, able to run the same software and support the same expansion cards as those. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones, Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Early IBM PC compatibles used the computer bus as the original PC. The IBM AT compatible bus was named the Industry Standard Architecture bus by manufacturers of compatible computers. The term IBM PC compatible is now a historical description only, only the Apple Macintosh classic Mac OS and macOS kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, so consumers are typically identified as being a PC or Mac user. IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computers success in the microcomputer market. On 12 August 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale, there were three operating systems available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft, in a crucial concession, IBMs agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS and this software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however, software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware. The 808x computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-, the 640 KB barrier on conventional system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period, other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 kB. Rumors of lookalike, compatible computers, created without IBMs approval, by June 1983 PC Magazine defined PC clone as a computer accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the foreign machine. Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead, Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable, the Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The company could not copy the BIOS directly as a result of the decision in Apple v. Franklin. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer version of MS-DOS, any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design. This expectation seemed reasonable in the marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC, the established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers
38.
Macintosh
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The Macintosh (/ˈmækᵻntɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh, is a series of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer on January 24,1984 and this was the companys first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. This first model was renamed to Macintosh 128k for uniqueness amongst a populous family of subsequently updated models which are also based on Apples same proprietary architecture. Since 1998, Apple has largely phased out the Macintosh name in favor of Mac, Macintosh systems still found success in education and desktop publishing and kept Apple as the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the 1990s, improvements in the rival Wintel platform, notably with the introduction of Windows 3.0, then Windows 95, gradually took market share from the more expensive Macintosh systems. The performance advantage of 68000-based Macintosh systems was eroded by Intels Pentium, even after a transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in 1994, the falling prices of commodity PC components and the release of Windows 95 saw the Macintosh user base decline. In 1998, after the return of Steve Jobs, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the all-in-one iMac G3, since their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup is entirely based on said processors and associated systems. Its current lineup comprises three desktops, and three laptops and its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently macOS version 10.12 Sierra, Macs are currently capable of running non-Apple operating systems such as Linux, OpenBSD, and Microsoft Windows with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software. Apple does not license macOS for use on computers, though it did license previous versions of the classic Mac OS through their Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. The Macintosh project was begun in 1979 by Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who envisioned an easy-to-use, in 1978 Apple began to organize the Apple Lisa project, aiming to build a next-generation machine similar to an advanced Apple III or the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC. In 1979, Steve Jobs learned of the work on graphical user interfaces taking place at Xerox PARC. He arranged a deal in which Xerox received Apple stock options in return for which Apple would license their designs, the basic layout of the Lisa was largely complete by 1982, at which point Jobs continual suggestions for improvements led to him being kicked off the project. At the same time that the Lisa was becoming a GUI machine in 1979, the design at that time was for a low-cost, easy-to-use machine for the average consumer. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979 and his initial team would eventually consist of himself, Howard, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, and Bud Tribble. Smiths design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen IC sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final products screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel monochrome display, burrels innovative design, combining the low production cost of an Apple II with the computing power of Lisas Motorola 68000 CPU, began to receive Jobs attentions
39.
Commodore International
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Commodore International was a North American home computer and electronics manufacturer. Commodore International, along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines, participated in the development of the computer industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The company developed and marketed one of the worlds best-selling desktop computers, the company that would become Commodore Business Machines, Inc. was founded in 1954 in Toronto as the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company by Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. He moved to Toronto to start production, by the late 1950s a wave of Japanese machines forced most North American typewriter companies to cease business, but Tramiel instead turned to adding machines. In 1955, the company was incorporated as Commodore Business Machines. In 1962, Commodore went public on the New York Stock Exchange, in the late 1960s, history repeated itself when Japanese firms started producing and exporting adding machines. The companys main investor and chairman, Irving Gould, suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to understand how to compete, instead, he returned with the new idea to produce electronic calculators, which were just coming on the market. Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the popular brands in the early 1970s. However, in 1975, Texas Instruments, the supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly. Commodore obtained an infusion of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including MOS Technology, Inc. in order to assure his supply. He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own, through the 1970s, Commodore also produced numerous peripherals and consumer electronic products such as the Chessmate, a chess computer based around a MOS6504 chip, released in 1978. In December 2007 when Tramiel was visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 and he said, I wanted to call my company General, but theres so many Generals in the U. S. Then I went to Admiral, but that was taken, so I wind up in Berlin, Germany, with my wife, and we were in a cab, and the cab made a short stop, and in front of us was an Opel Commodore. Tramiel gave this account in interviews, but Opels Commodore didnt debut until 1967. Once Chuck Peddle had taken over engineering at Commodore, he convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were already a dead end, from PETs 1977 debut, Commodore would be a computer company. The operational headquarters, where research and development of new products occurred, retained the name Commodore Business Machines, in 1980 Commodore launched production for the European market in Braunschweig. By 1980 Commodore was one of the three largest microcomputer companies, and the largest in the Common Market and this was addressed with the introduction of the VIC-20 in 1981, which was introduced at a cost of US$299 and sold in retail stores. Commodore took out ads featuring William Shatner asking consumers Why buy just a video game
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Amiga
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The Amiga is a family of personal computers sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The Amiga provided a significant upgrade from earlier 8-bit home computers, the Amiga 1000 was officially released in July 1985, but a series of production problems meant it did not become widely available until early 1986. The best selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 and became one of the home computers of the late 1980s. The A3000, introduced in 1990, started the second generation of Amiga systems, followed by the A500+, finally, as the third generation, the A1200 and the A4000 were released in late 1992. The platform became particularly popular for gaming and programming demos and it also found a prominent role in the desktop video, video production, and show control business, leading to video editing systems such as the Video Toaster. The Amigas native ability to play back multiple digital sound samples made it a popular platform for early tracker music software. It was also an expensive alternative to the Apple Macintosh. Initially, the Amiga was developed alongside various Commodore PC clones, Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after the Amiga CD32 model failed in the marketplace. Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including Genesi, Eyetech, ACube Systems Srl, likewise, AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones and compatible systems such as MorphOS, AmigaOS4 and AROS. The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody—including Commodores marketing department—could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, its obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound. Nine years later, vendors are still struggling to make systems that work like 1985 Amigas, Jay Miner joined Atari in the 1970s to develop custom integrated circuits, and led development of the Atari 2600s TIA. Almost as soon as its development was complete, the team developing a much more sophisticated set of chips, CTIA, ANTIC and POKEY. With the 8-bit lines launch in 1979, Miner again started looking at a next generation chipset, Miner wanted to start work with the new Motorola 68000, but management was only interested in another MOS6502 based system. Miner left the company, and the industry, shortly thereafter, in 1982, Larry Kaplan was approached by a number of investors who wanted to develop a new game platform. Kaplan hired Miner to run the side of the newly formed company. The system was code-named Lorraine in keeping with Miners policy of giving systems female names, in case the company presidents wife. When Kaplan left the late in 1982 to rejoin Atari, Miner was promoted to head engineer
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Doom (series)
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Doom is a series of first-person shooter video games developed by id Software. The series focuses on the exploits of a space marine operating under the auspices of Union Aerospace Corporation, who fights hordes of demons. Since the release of Doom in 1993, the series has spawned numerous sequels, expansion packs, since its debut, over 10 million copies of games in the Doom series have been sold. The player has to battle the forces of Hell, consisting of demons, in the games, the players character will often go back and forth through hell. Doom II follows after the events in Doom, the once again assumes the role of the unnamed space marine. After returning from Hell, the finds that Earth has also been invaded by the demons. Doom II, Hell on Earth was released in 1994, followed by two official releases based on its version of the Doom engine, Master Levels for Doom II in 1995. Doom 64 was released in 1997, developed by Midway Games, the Doom series remained dormant between 1997 and 2000, when Doom 3 was announced. Doom 3 had its own expansion pack released in 2005, titled Doom 3 and it was later renamed to simply Doom in 2014. The game became a second reboot of the series, rather than a continuation or origin story of earlier games and was released in 2016, a set of four novels based on Doom were written with permission of id Software by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver. The books, listed in order, are titled Knee Deep in the Dead, Hell on Earth, Infernal Sky, all were published between June 1995 and January 1996 by Pocket Books. Some in the Doom community started calling the unnamed Marine in the games Flynn Taggart or Fly, after the character of the novels. The first two books featured recognizable locations and situations from the first two games and it was criticized for ridiculous dialogue and a poor story, as well as erroneous representations of some weapons from the game. On January 31,2005, a game resembling the classic Space Hulk was released, entitled Doom. An eponymous film adaptation was released in 2005, in early 2008, a new series of Doom novels by Matthew J. Costello were published, an author who had worked on the story and scripts for Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil. The series of books aim to novelize the story of Doom 3, with the first installment, Worlds on Fire, the second book in the series, Maelstrom, was released in March 2009. In 2008, Id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead has stated in an interview that another Doom movie, possibly based on Doom 4, strategy guides released in printed editions include, Robert E. In 1996, Next Generation ranked the series as the 19th top game of all time, for how despite the hundreds of titles, no one has ever been able to equal ids original
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Enthusiast computing
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Enthusiast computing refers to a sub-culture of personal computer users who focus on extremely high-end computers. Manufacturers of performance-oriented parts typically include an enthusiast model in their offerings, enthusiast computers commonly feature extravagant cases and high-end components, and are sometimes liquid cooled. Although high-end computers may be bought retail in the manner as the common computer. Games have historically been the force behind the rapid pace of consumer hardware development. For example, The 7th Guest and Myst helped drive the adoption of CD-ROMs, intel and AMD both incorporated instruction sets such as MMX, 3DNow. and Streaming SIMD Extensions into their processors to support the PCs growing role as a home entertainment device. More recently, however, other types of applications have piqued the interest of computing enthusiasts, an enthusiast PC implies the early adoption of new hardware, which is sold at a premium price. As an example, the video card ATI Radeon 9700 Pro was released at US$399 in 2002, many gaming PCs support the use of multiple video cards in SLI or CrossFire, making it possible to spend thousands of dollars in graphics cards alone. It is worth noting that, beyond a level of performance, price increases dramatically while offering smaller increases in performance. Enthusiast users who purchase high-end graphics cards will often upgrade as soon as new cards are released. Gaming PCs use hardware accelerated video cards which offer high-end rasterisation-based rendering/image quality, the graphics card is the most important part determining the capabilities of a gaming PC. Memory capacity on 3D cards is usually at least 256 MB to 12 GB, the amount of video RAM is more important while gaming in higher resolution or using high resolution textures and extensive modding. Having at least 2GB to 4GB of VRAM or more is suggested for todays standards when gaming, the type of memory used, however, is an important factor. Current VRAM standards are at GDDR5 and GDDR5X, modern graphics cards use the PCI Express expansion slot. Two or more cards can be used simultaneously on motherboards supporting SLI or ATI CrossFire technology, for nVidia. Both technologies allow for two and four graphics cards, although nVidia now only recommending two, of the same model to be used in unison to process and render an image. It is worth noting that a graphics card will also use more electricity, or have a higher power draw. This power draw only increases as the number of graphics cards increases, enthusiasts also tend to overclock their graphics cards which does add power draw. This is another example of depreciating returns and it is clear that a fast response time and high refresh rate is desired in order to display smooth motion
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Graphics cards
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A video card is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display. Frequently, these are advertised as discrete or dedicated graphics cards, Standards such as MDA, CGA, HGC, Tandy, PGC, EGA, VGA, MCGA,8514 or XGA were introduced from 1982 to 1990 and supported by a variety of hardware manufacturers. The majority of video cards are built with either AMD-sourced or Nvidia-sourced graphics chips. Until 2000, 3dfx Interactive was also an important, and often groundbreaking, most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors. Video cards also have sound capabilities to output sound – along with the video for connected TVs or monitors with integrated speakers. Graphics cards werent very useful for computers, since they didnt have the capability to run graphic-based games or high-resolution videos as modern computers do now. Within the industry, video cards are sometimes called graphics add-in-boards, abbreviated as AIBs, as an alternative to the use of a video card, video hardware can be integrated into the motherboard or the CPU. Both approaches can be called integrated graphics, motherboard-based implementations are sometimes called on-board video while CPU-based implementations are known as accelerated processing units. The ability to disable the integrated graphics sometimes also allows the use of a motherboard on which the on-board video has failed. Sometimes both the graphics and a dedicated graphics card can be used simultaneously to feed separate displays. The main advantages of integrated graphics include cost, compactness, simplicity, the performance disadvantage of integrated graphics arises because the graphics processor shares system resources with the CPU. A dedicated graphics card has its own random access memory, its own cooling system, upgrading to a dedicated graphics card offloads work from the CPU and system RAM, so not only will graphics processing be faster, but the computers overall performance may also improve. Both of the dominant CPU makers, AMD and Intel, are moving to APUs, as of late 2013, the best APUs provide graphics processing approaching mid-range mobile video cards and are adequate for casual gaming. Users seeking the highest video performance for gaming or other graphics-intensive uses should still choose computers with dedicated graphics cards. Beyond the enthusiast segment is the market for video cards for workstations used in the special effects industry. Nvidia is a player in the professional segment. As the processing power of cards has increased, so has their demand for electrical power. Current high-performance video cards tend to consume a great deal of power, for example, the thermal design power for the GeForce GTX TITAN is 250 Watts
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3dfx Interactive
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3dfx Interactive was a company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the late 1990s until 2000, the companys flagship product was the Voodoo Graphics, an add-in card that accelerated 3D graphics. The hardware accelerated only 3D rendering, relying on the PCs current video card for 2D support, despite this limitation, the Voodoo Graphics product and its follow-up, Voodoo2, were popular. It became standard for 3D games to support for the companys Glide API. 3dfx rapidly declined beginning in the late 1990s and was acquired by Nvidia mostly for intellectual property rights after going bankrupt in 2002, founded in 1994 by Ross Smith, Gary Tarolli and Scott Sellers with backing from Gordie Campbells TechFarm, 3dfx released its Voodoo Graphics chip in 1996. 3dfx gained initial fame in the arcade market, the first arcade machine that 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics hardware was used in was ICE Home Run Derby, a game released in 1996. Later that year it was featured in popular titles, such as Ataris San Francisco Rush. Prior to affordable 3D hardware, games such as Doom and Quake had compelled video game players to move from their 80386s to 80486s, and then to the Pentium. A typical Voodoo Graphics PCI expansion card consisted of a DAC, a frame buffer processor, the RAM and graphics processors operated at 50 MHz. It provided only 3D acceleration and as such the computer also needed a video controller for conventional 2D software. A pass-through VGA cable daisy-chained the video controller to the Voodoo, the method used to engage the Voodoos output circuitry varied between cards, with some using mechanical relays while others utilized purely electronic components. The mechanical relays emitted an audible clicking sound when they engaged and disengaged, the Voodoos primary competition was from PowerVR and Rendition. PowerVR produced a similar 3D-only add-on card with capable 3D support, 3Dfx saw intense competition in the market from cards that offered the combination of 2D and 3D acceleration. While these cards, such as Matrox Mystique, S3 ViRGE and ATI 3D Rage, offered inferior 3D acceleration, their lower cost and this advantage is still in place today. The abstraction layers overhead crippled performance in practice, while there were many games that used Glide, the killer application for Voodoo Graphics was the MiniGL driver developed to allow hardware acceleration of the game Quake by id Software. MiniGL implemented only the subset of OpenGL used by Quake, in August 1997, 3dfx released the Voodoo Rush chipset, combining a Voodoo chip with a 2D chip that lay on the same circuit board, eliminating the need for a separate VGA card. The Rush had the same specifications as Voodoo Graphics, but did not perform as well because the Rush chipset had to share memory bandwidth with the CRTC of the 2D chip. Furthermore, the Rush chipset was not directly present on the PCI bus but had to be programmed through linked registers of the 2D chip, the typical performance hit was around 10% compared to Voodoo Graphics, and even worse in windowed mode
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ATI Technologies
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ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technology Inc. the company listed publicly in 1993, Advanced Micro Devices acquired ATI in 2006. As a major fabrication-less or fabless semiconductor company, ATI conducted research and development in-house and outsourced the manufacturing, since 2010, AMDs graphics processor products have ceased using the ATI brand name. Lee Ka Lau, Francis Lau, Benny Lau, and Kwok Yuen Ho founded ATI in 1985 as Array Technology Inc, working primarily in the OEM field, ATI produced integrated graphics cards for PC manufacturers such as IBM and Commodore. By 1987, ATI had grown into an independent graphics-card retailer, introducing EGA Wonder, in the early nineties they released products able to process graphics without the CPU, in May 1991, the Mach8, in 1992 the Mach32, which offered improved memory bandwidth and GUI acceleration. ATI Technologies Inc. went public in 1993, with stock listed on NASDAQ, ATI introduced its first combination of 2D and 3D accelerator under the name 3D Rage. This chip was based on the Mach 64, but it featured elemental 3D acceleration, the ATI Rage line powered almost the entire range of ATI graphics products. In particular, the Rage Pro was one of the first viable 2D-plus-3D alternatives to 3Dfxs 3D-only Voodoo chipset, 3D acceleration in the Rage line advanced from the basic functionality within the initial 3D Rage to a more advanced DirectX6.0 accelerator in the 1999 Rage 128. The All-in-Wonder product line introduced in 1996, was the first combination of integrated graphics chip with TV tuner card, ATI entered the mobile computing sector by introducing 3D-graphics acceleration to laptops in 1996. In 1997, ATI acquired Tseng Labss graphics assets, which included 40 engineers, the Radeon line of graphics products was unveiled in 2000. The initial Radeon graphics processing unit offered a design with DirectX7.0 3D acceleration, video acceleration. In 2000, ATI acquired ArtX, which engineered the Flipper graphics chip used in the Nintendo GameCube game console and they also created a modified version of the chip for the successor of the GameCube, the Wii. Microsoft contracted ATI to design the core for the Xbox 360. Later in 2005, ATI acquired Terayons cable modem silicon intellectual property, Ho remained as Chairman of the Board until he retired in November 2005. Dave Orton replaced him as the President and CEO of the organization, on July 24,2006, a joint announcement revealed that Advanced Micro Devices would acquire ATI in a deal valued at $5.6 billion. The acquisition consideration closed on October 25,2006, and included over $2 billion financed from a loan and 56 million shares of AMD stock. ATIs operations became part of the AMD Graphics Product Group, and ATIs CEO Dave Orton became the Executive Vice President of Visual, on 30 August 2010, John Trikola announced that AMD would retire the ATI brand for its graphics chipsets in favor of the AMD name. In addition to developing high-end GPUs for PCs and Apple Macs, ATI also designed embedded versions for laptops, PDAs and mobile phones, integrated motherboards, Ruby, a fictional female character described as a mercenary for hire, was created by ATI to promote some of its products
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Nvidia
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Nvidia Corporation is an American technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It designs graphics processing units for the market, as well as system on a chip units for the mobile computing. Its primary GPU product line, labeled GeForce, is in competition with Advanced Micro Devices Radeon products. Nvidia expanded its presence in the industry with its handheld SHIELD Portable, SHIELD Tablet. Since 2014, Nvidia has shifted to become a company focused on four markets – gaming, professional visualization, data centers. In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and they are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world. More recently, It has moved into the computing market. In addition to AMD, its competitors include Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia is now focused on artificial intelligence. The name of the company comes from Invidia in Roman mythology who corresponds to Nemesis, RIVA TNT in 1998 solidified Nvidias reputation for capable hardware. Autumn 1999 saw the release of the GeForce, most notably introducing on-board transformation, running at 120 MHz and featuring four pixel pipelines, it implemented advanced video acceleration, motion compensation and hardware sub-picture alpha blending. The GeForce outperformed existing products by a wide margin, due to the success of its products, Nvidia won the contract to develop the graphics hardware for Microsofts Xbox game console, which earned Nvidia a $200 million advance. However, the project drew the time of many of its best engineers away from other projects, in the short term this did not matter, and the GeForce2 GTS shipped in the summer of 2000. In December 2000, Nvidia reached an agreement to acquire the assets of its one-time rival 3dfx. The acquisition process was finalized in April 2002, in July 2002, Nvidia acquired Exluna for an undisclosed sum. Exluna made software rendering tools and the personnel were merged into the Cg project, in August 2003, Nvidia acquired MediaQ for approximately US$70 million. On April 22,2004, Nvidia acquired iReady, also a provider of high performance TCP/IP, in December 2004, it was announced that Nvidia would assist Sony with the design of the graphics processor in the PlayStation 3 game console. In March 2006, it emerged that Nvidia would deliver RSX to Sony as an IP core, under the agreement, Nvidia would provide ongoing support to port the RSX to Sonys fabs of choice, as well as die shrinks to 65 nm. This practice contrasted with its business arrangement with Microsoft, in which Nvidia managed production, meanwhile, in May 2005 Microsoft chose to license a design by ATI and to make its own manufacturing arrangements for the Xbox 360 graphics hardware, as had Nintendo for the Wii console
