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AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) is an extension to PCI (though not compatible) allowing graphic adapters to use system memory, as well as being faster at 66MHz and above. Can typically transmit 2x or 4x more data than PCI in the same time.
This is a set of instructions added by AMD to speed-up 3D multimedia applications using the processor in conjunction with a graphics card. Support for them is included in DirectX 6 and later.
It is a measure of information carrying capacity of a communications channel; the higher the bandwidth, the greater the amount of information that can be carried.
This is the memory used by DOS and its programs to run in (below 1MB). No matter how much memory you actually have, you still cannot use more/bigger DOS programs unless they use EMS or XMS memory. SiSoft Sandra Help File
The BIOS (Basic Input Output System) contains the start-up code that initialises and starts your PC. It also serves as an interface between hardware and software.
A bus is a set of wires (lines on boards, etc.) that allow devices to communicate. Generally this is done in parallel fashion to make the exchange of bytes faster. This field lists the buses present in your PC.
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is a local bus capable of self-arbitration. Current versions (2.00 & 2.10) are 32-bit at 33MHz with 64-bit 66MHz and faster on the horizon. It is the principal bus used in today's PCs.
ISA Bus - ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) is the original bus used in the 1st PC. It started with 8-bits at 8MHz, moving to 16-bit at 8-9MHz with the 286 processor. Even today it is still present in PCs to cater for modems, sound cards, I/O boards, etc.
EISA Bus - EISA (Enhanced ISA) is the successor of ISA, using 32-bit at 8MHz but with burst mode support and arbitration. It is compatible with ISA. However it has been superseded by PCI.
MCA Bus - MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) was supposed to be the successor to ISA as designed by IBM and used in the PS/2 range of PCs. 32-bit, with arbitration and burst mode like EISA but not compatible with ISA at all. However it did not catch on with other PC manufacturers and was superseded by PCI.
VESA Bus - VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) was an extension to ISA using 32-bits and variable speed - same as the processor speed. While it was very fast, only 2-3 cards could be plugged-in at lower speeds. Superseded by PCI.
AGP Bus - AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) is an extension to PCI (though not compatible) allowing graphic adapters to use system memory, as well as being faster at 66MHz and above. Can typically transmit 2x or 4x more data than PCI in the same time. You can only use 1 slot now. Very new.
USB Bus - USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a peripheral bus designed to link slow & medium speed peripherals like keyboards, mice, scanners, modems, etc. thus eliminating the different types of sockets currently present. Quite New.
PCMCIA Bus - PCMCIA (Card Bus) is a peripheral bus used to connect peripherals to notebooks. You can add all the usual peripherals. The newest version uses 32-bits and is as fast as PCI. Quite new.
Also called L2 cache. Fast but small memory used by the chipset to hold recently accessed data and greatly speed the PC.
Special arithmetic unit that does floating-point calculations directly, much faster than the processor would have done. While today this is integrated in the processor
DirectDraw - is a software interface that provides direct access to display devices while maintaining compatibility with the Windows graphics device interface (GDI). It is not a high-level application programming interface (API) for graphics. DirectDraw provides a device-independent way for games and Windows subsystem software, such as 3-D graphics packages and digital video codecs, to gain access to the features of specific display devices. DirectDraw works with a wide variety of display hardware, ranging from simple SVGA monitors to advanced hardware implementations that provide clipping, stretching, and non-RGB color format support. The interface is designed so that an applications can enumerate the capabilities of the underlying hardware and then use any supported hardware-accelerated features. Features that are not implemented in hardware are emulated by DirectX.
Direct3D - Direct3D is designed to enable world-class game and interactive three-dimensional (3-D) graphics on a computer running Windows. Its mission is to provide device-dependent access to 3-D video-display hardware in a device-independent manner. Simply put, Direct3D is a drawing interface for 3-D hardware.
DirectSound - The Microsoft DirectSound application programming interface (API) is the audio component of the DirectX. DirectSound provides low-latency mixing, hardware acceleration, and direct access to the sound device. It provides this functionality while maintaining compatibility with existing device drivers.
DirectPlay - The Microsoft DirectPlay application programming interface (API) for Windows is a software interface that simplifies application access to communication services. DirectPlay has become a technology family that not only provides a way for applications to communicate with each other, independent of the underlying transport, protocol, or online service, but also provides this independence for matchmaking servers and game servers. Applications (especially games) can be more compelling if they can be played against real players, and the personal computer has richer connectivity options than any game platform in history.
DirectInput - Microsoft DirectInput provides support for input devices including the mouse, keyboard, and joystick, as well as for force-feedback (input/output) devices.
Is a memory interface which enables DOS programs to run in protected mode using a DOS extender. These DOS programs can be 32-bit (like Windows 95, NT) and use all the installed memory directly, without the need of cumbersome memory managers like EMS or XMS. The Base Memory limitation does not matter any more. Most modern games requiring megabytes of memory uses this interface.
Indicates whether your monitor can go to sleep mode, i.e. reduce its power. VESA DPMS (Display Power Management Signalling) is an interface through which the video adapter can power down the monitor.
Energy Star - is a programme administered by U. S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to reduce the power consumed by computers and peripherals.
As Base Memory is restricted to about 640KB, a Lotus / Intel / Microsoft (LIM) collaboration developed a technique for making more memory available to programs. The EMS (Expanded Memory Specification) bypasses these limits by supporting memory cards (386+ computers usually emulate it with emm386 or compatible memory manager) that contain 16KB memory pages (banks) that are mapped into the address space by the processor. Applications must be specially written to uses EMS, so most old DOS heavyweight programs use it. You will need to specify a generous amount of it in the program properties if you work with large data.
A collection of characters and symbols that share a common design.
Font Family - One of two attributes used to organise TrueType fonts. Family names include Courier New, Arial, and Times New Roman.
Font Style -One of two attributes used to organise TrueType fonts. Style names include extra-bold, bold, and italic.
Font Mapper - An algorithm that Windows uses to determine which available font most closely matches a requested font.
TrueType Font - A font whose glyphs are stored as a collection of line and curve commands plus a collection of hints. Windows uses the line and curve commands to define the outline of the glyph's bitmap. Windows uses the hints to adjust the length of the lines and shapes of the curves. These hints and the respective adjustments are based on the amount of scaling used to reduce or increase the size of the bitmap.
Height - Specifies the height, in logical units, of the font’s character cell or character. The character height value is the character cell height value minus the internal-leading value.
Ascent - Specifies the ascent (units above the base line) of characters.
Descent - Specifies the descent (units below the base line) of characters.
Escapement - Specifies the angle, in tenths of degrees, between the escapement vector and the x-axis of the device. The escapement vector is parallel to the base line of a row of text.
Orientation - Specifies the angle, in tenths of degrees, between each character’s base line and the x-axis of the device.
Width - Specifies the average width, in logical units, of characters in the font.
Internal Leading - Specifies the amount of leading (space) inside the bounds set by the height. Accent marks and other diacritical characters may occur in this area.
External Leading - Specifies the amount of extra leading (space) that the application adds between rows.
Weight - Specifies the weight of the font in the range 0 through 1000. For example, 400 is normal and 700 is bold.
Pitch - Specifies whether all the characters have the same width or different widths.
Recommended Aspect Ratio - The aspect ratio of the device for which the font was designed.
A packet data format cinsisting of streams of bit. A frame includes start bit, data bit, an optional parity bit, and stop bit in additional to the payload.
A system that interconnects network (or applications) that communicate using diffrent protocols, and bridges their diffrent by transforming one protocol into another.
Is a 64K block of memory above 1MB which can be accessed by real mode programs due to a quirk in the x86 processor architecture. This can be used to increase the available DOS memory. A XMS driver is required. HMA in use - whether the HMA is used or it is free.
This provides fro the routing of packets of data over multiple network on their way to their final destination.
A digital switched network that provides very fast, simultaneous transmission of voice, data and images over a single telephone line. It enables the transport of hundreds of communication abd multiple faxes as well as medium-quality video images, at ones, in seconds instead of minutes.
Difference between a source's clock and a receiver's clock.
The amount of time before a rtequested network or communication channel is available for transmission or the amount of time required for a transmmition to reach its destination.
Multi-Media eXtensions is s set of instructions added by Intel to speed-up multimedia applications by using SIMD (single instruction multiple data) type operation like multi-processor arrays. MMX is an extension to the x86 instruction set that allows multiple bytes of data to be packed together in a single register and operated on simultaneously. MMX consists of 57 new instructions for speeding multimedia tasks. The trick to these new instructions is that they operate on many different data elements at once, which increases the overall amount of work the processor can do. Examples range from operating on multiple pixels in a bitmapped image to multiple sound channels in an audio stream. MMX is not intrinsically a graphics or multimedia acceleration technology, but those are the types of applications that stand to benefit most. MMX will provide a substantial performance boost for some new applications that are coded to use MMX (more so for home rather than for business applications). Extended MMX Technology - Extensions added to MMX by Cyrix. Support for them is included in DirectX 6.1 and later.
On the internet , data is broken into small chunks called packts; each packet travels the network independently. packet size can vary from 40 to 32,000 bytes, depending on network hardware and media.
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is a local bus capable of self-arbitration. Current versions (2.00 & 2.10) are 32-bit at 33MHz with 64-bit 66MHz and faster on the horizon. It is the principal bus used in today’s PCs. Bridges can be used to connect PCI buses together or to connect to ISA, EISA, MCA, PCMCIA or other bus types
The processor is the heart/brain of the system, executing the software running on your PC.
Serial ports use an UART (Universal AsynchRonous Transmitter) chip which is a converter that transforms data from parallel 8-bit to the required standard and vice-versa. It also manages the COM port and the connections. This is very important for communications thruput and all modern computers use at least an 16550A or better.
Printer Name - the type and make of the printer. Printer Status - the status of the printer. The printer can be idle, printing documents or in an error mode. The error type is specified if known. Printer Type - the printer can be either local or remote (i.e. on a network). Shared As - the name of the shared resource that represents this printer. Port - the port the printer is connected to. Comments - user defined comments for this printer. Print Processor - the print engine that the printer driver uses. Generally it is Windows but there are other specialised print processors, especially on a network. Data Type - the format in which printing information is stored on your disk. Generally EMF (Enhanced Metafile Format) is faster as it is smaller and is printer independent. RAW format is printer specific and takes more space but some printers (e.g. faxes) cannot use EMF. Default Printer - indicates whether this is the default printer. Shared Printer - indicates whether this printer can be shared with other users on a network. Spooler Priority - the process priority of the print spooler. Maximum prints faster but the machine becomes very slow since most time is spent printing. The default is minimum. Driver Version - the version of the printer driver. Supported Windows Version - the version of Windows the driver was designed for. For Windows 95 this should be 4.00. Print Driver ID - the filename of the print driver. Printer Driver Version - the file version of the print driver. Print Technology - the technology used by the printer. Most printers are raster printers (i.e. deal with dots) - only plotters use vector printing technology. Printer Mode - the resolution in dpi (dots per inch) and monochrome/colour depth. Print Quality - the print quality either as a term (e.g. Draft, Proof) or specified in dpi. Paper Size - the paper type used and its dimensions. Page Orientation - can either be portrait or landscape. Paper Source - the bin used for printing. ICM Colour Matching - the system used to optimised the printing of colours or grey scales. True Type Font Support - specifies whether the printer can download the fonts (i.e. the printer does the rendering) or print them as graphics (i.e. rendered by the computer). Printer Bins - the list of paper bins supported by the printer. Paper Types - the list of paper types and dimensions supported by the printer. Printer Modes - the list of supported printer resolutions and monochrome/colour depths. Printer Device Mode - various characteristics of the video mode which are self-explanatory. Printer Capabilities - lists the various functions the printer supports natively. Functions not supported will be emulated by Windows. Very fast printers implement most of the listed capabilities and, generally, this is why there can be a large difference between two printers even if the same hardware is used. The printer driver can be more important then the hardware itself! Printer Clipping Capabilities - lists the clipping capabilities of the printer. Printer Raster Capabilities - lists the drawing capabilities of the printer. Printer Curve Capabilities - lists the curve drawing capabilities of the printer. Printer Line Capabilities - lists the line drawing capabilities of the printer. Printer Polygonal Capabilities - lists the polygon/triangle capabilities of the printer. Printer Text Capabilities - lists the text drawing capabilities of the printer. Printer Drive Escapes - lists the specialised functions the printer driver supports.
The number of times the screen is painted every second. This number should be over 70Hz if you don’t want to see flickering or over 80-85Hz if you’re using a high resolution.
On some video adapters not using VRAM (Video RAM) or WRAM (Windowed RAM) increasing this number decreases performance especially at high resolutions and colour depths.
shows how long the computers waits after you press and hold down a key. For example 2 is a medium repeat delay (nearly the default) while 0 is fast, i.e. the computer will not wait at all.
shows how fast a key repeats when you press and hold it down. Roughly it means characters/second. For example 16 is a medium repeat speed; 22 is fast where 9 is slow
An enhanced functionality of some keyboards. This enables you to modify the Repeat Speed and Repeat Delay. These two variables can be changed usually from the BIOS.
Serial ports use an UART (Universal AsynchRonous Transmitter) chip which is a converter that transforms data from parallel 8-bit to the required standard and vice-versa. It also manages the COM port and the connections. This is very important for communications thruput and all modern computers use at least an 16550A or better.
Are blocks of memory found between memory locations B000-EFFF (or C800-EFFF), the area normally reserved for various BIOS ROMs. But, these do not occupy all the space, so we can use this holes to load programs and free base memory. UMBs are provided by an EMS driver like EMM386, QEMM386 or Windows. Depending on configuration you may have around 160KB of UMB space. If you use EMS memory with a page frame then you lose 64KB. The more cards you have the less UMB space remains free. You can load TSR programs in the UMBs left using DOS commands manually or using MemMaker.
Windows uses XMS (eXtended Memory Specification) memory itself provided by HIMEM (or compatible memory manager) accessing it directly. Windows also caches XMS through the memory manager, taking advantage of the attributes of Windows applications memory segments. Also, Protected Mode DOS applications can use DPMI and VCPI to access XMS.