Learning Path: Computer Details

MICROPROCESSORS...microprocessor - Pentium - PowerPC - G3 - Alpha - RISC - CISC - AMD - K6 - K7 - Cyrix - Celeron - Xeon - NeXT - Pentium III - register - clock speed - oscillator - processor serial number (PSN) - very long instruction word (VLIW) - no op - pipeline burst cache

MOTHERBOARDS AND DATA BUSES...chassis - motherboard - mobo - bus - adapter - card - daughterboard - ZIF socket - Socket 7 - Slot and Slot 2 - PCI

MEMORY...A RAM Guide - memory - RAM - ROM - EPROM - EEPROM - cache - cache memory - level-1 and level-2 cache - nonvolatile memory - flash memory - static RAM (SRAM) - BSRAM - dynamic RAM (DRAM) - Fast Page Mode DRAM - Extended Data Out RAM - EDO DRAM - Burst EDO DRAM - Enhanced DRAM - synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) - JEDEC SDRAM - PC100 SDRAM - Double Data Rate SDRAM - Enhanced Synchronous DRAM (ESDRAM) - Direct Rambus DRAM - SyncLink DRAM - video RAM - RAMDAC - Synchronous Graphics RAM (SGRAM) - Window RAM (WRAM) - Multibank DRAM (MDRAM) - Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) - cycle time - access time - CAS - RAS - smartcard - PRAM - memory leak - ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) - pipeline burst cache

HARD DISK, DISKETTE, AND CD-ROM...diskette - hard disk - IDE - EIDE - S.M.A.R.T. - FAT and FAT32 - VFAT - CD-ROM - access time - Zip drive - COLD

INPUT/OUTPUT DEVICES AND PORTS...keyboard - mouse - touch pad - trackball - stylus - port - parallel - serial - EPP/ECP - TTY - SCSI - FireWire (1394) - Universal Serial Bus (USB) - plug-and-play (PnP) - ESCD - Fibre Channel

DISPLAY AND VIDEO TECHNOLOGY...display - screen - panel - monitor - VDT - cathode ray tube (CRT) - liquid crystal display (LCD) - TFT - field emission display - dot pitch - pixel - ppi - resolution - dots per inch - display modes (CGA, EGA, VGA, XGA, and SVGA) - raster - raster graphics - vector graphics - raster image processor - interlaced and non-interlaced display - image - imaging - bit map - window - windowing system - X Window System - render - cursor - Roentgen - 3270 - video adapter - video RAM - graphics accelerator - Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) - Zoomed Video port (ZV port) - 3-D - VRML - DVD - Divx - HDTV - degauss - jitter - screen capture - show control

PRINTERS...printer - laser printer - Centronics parallel interface - IEEE 1284 standard - character - font - typeface - glyph - Postscript - PCL - OpenType - Advanced Function Printing (AFP) - EMF and raw files - TTY

AUDIO...INTRODUCTION TO AUDIO  - audio and audio card - audio frequency (AF) - analog - decibel - dynamic range - audio noise - white noise and pink noise - acoustic coupler - sample rate - bit depth - AIFF - Wave file - wavetable - midi - SMF - MPEG - MPEG standards - MP3 - ripper - encoder - frame rate - RealAudio - a2b - S/PDIF - AES/EBU - DAT - digital workstation (DAW) - ADAT - sequencer - talkback - ASIO - SDII - flanging - jam sync - reverb - phaser - vocoder - jitter - audio modem riser (AMR)

View other topics for self-study by visiting our Guide to the Learning Paths.