Mainframe - Class of large business computers.
Mainframes are generally composed of several cabinets, a CPU cabinet with
the main processors and various peripheral and storage cabinets. "Big Iron". Today's mainframes are quite small, about a cubic yard. "Mainframe" (improper usage) - What many office people called the
minicomputer, and what they now call the server.
CPU - Central Processing Unit - In "big iron" it's
the main cabinet - all else is storage and peripherals. In PCs it's a big
chip on the main circuit board (mother board) that does the actuall processing
- all other chips are "support chips".
Hard Disk, Hard Disk Drive - A Hard Disk Drive is a
storage device containing one or more hard disks, rotating platters
coated with a magnetic material. Read/Write heads, drive and stepper motors,
ad a logic board make up the rest of the active components. Current sealed
hard disk drives were originally called "Winchester" drives (because of the
numeric designation of an early example was the same as that of a bullet size).
Earlier mainframe Hard Disk Drives were floor standing with a removable stack
of 15" platters under a transparent "cake pan" lid.
Hard Disk (improper usage) - What many office people call the computer
cabinet of their PCs. Hard Disk (improper usage) - What some office people call a 3-1/2"
floppy disk (which is in a rigid envelope, unlike the flexible envelope of the
5-1/2" and 8" floppy disks)
PC - Personal Computer - properly any single user
computer, but commonly an IBM PC compatible computer (as in PC vs. Macintosh
despite the Macintosh being a PC).
A peripheral I/O bus usually manifests as a row of "slot" connectors in a
computer. "Board" can be plugged into these slots to add functionality and
outside connections to the computer. Of course, a peripheral I/O bus may have
no slot connectors at all if it just connects peripherals permanently built
into the computer's mother board.
ISA - Industry Standard Architecture - The peripheral
I/O bus architecture first used in the IBM PC AT. It consists of the old 8-bit
XT bus slot (62 contacts) with a shorter slot (36 contacts) added behind it to
increase bandwidth to 16-bits. This bus architecture is used only for Intel
x86 and compatible based computers (286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II,
Pentium III).
PCI, PCI-X - a processor independent peripheral I/O
bus architecture designed to succeed the ISA bus.
It is usually found in combination with ISA slots in Intel based PCs, and is
found in Apple Macintosh computers as well. The slot has 98 + 22 contacts and
is nearly identical (except for contact count) to IBM's MCA bus slot. PCI
was designed to support the Intel/Microsoft
Plug and Play specification.
PCI-X is a yet to be realeased (Q1 2000) version supporting higher
throughput.
VESA - a peripheral I/O bus designed to support the
higher speed needs of fast video cards in the days when the ISA bus ruled. It
vanished overnight when the PCI bus was introduced. Some board makers adopted
the VESA bus also for higher performance (priced) hard disk controllers.
InfiniBand - I/O bus architecture for computers, intended
to succeed PCI in servers, routers and other high performance computers. This
is an aliance of former rivals Future I/O (Compaq, Hewlett-Packard,
IBM and others) and Next Generation I/O (Intel, Sun, Dell and others).
It is a chanel switched bus rather than a shared bus like ISA, PCI, etc. and
operates at 2.5-Gbps. Spec at
www.infinibandta.org.
Plug and Play - "Plug and Pray" - An Intel /
Microsoft specification intended to make adding peripherals to a
Windows PC as easy as on the Apple Macintosh. Plug and Play Installs range
from nearly effortless or nearly impossible, depending on the mood Windows is
in on the particular PC. Back in the bad old days when modems had to be
jumpered for base address an interrupt, it could take 15 minutes for an expert
to install a new modem. With Plug and Pray it can take an entire day - and
then a week later the PC forgets it ever had a modem.
Of course, Microsoft's Windows implementation does not to conform to the
specification, so BIOS makers had to include a switch for "Plug and Play OS -
Yes" (Windows) or "No" (any OS implementing Plug and Play according to spec).
This terminology was designed not to offend Microsoft.
Operating Systems - Also called DOS (Disk Operating System)
are programs that interface between a computer and "applications
programs" (the programs that you use to do your job or play your games).
Writing to the Operating System instead of the computer itself frees the
programmer from knowing all the arcane details of each computer model and makes
software much more affordable than it would otherwise be. Typical Operating
Systems are:
CP/M, CP/M80, CP/M86 - Control Program /
Microprocessor - Operating systems for Intel based
PCs predating the IBM PC. Published by Digital Research, it was the business
standard before PC DOS/MS DOS
MP/M - Multi-user version of CP/M - Yes, Virginia,
PCs were Multi-user, Multi-tasking before the IBM PC came out with its
single-user, single-tasking MS DOS.
Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS, Multiuser DOS -
Multi-User Multi-Tasking successors to MP/M, able to handle much larger disk
and memory spaces. Used to control the Trident misile system, IBM's Point of
Sale system, Medical Management systems, etc. The Multiuser DOS version runs
on IBM compatible PCs and can run both real multiuser CP/M programs and network
capable MS DOS programs, as well as single user MS DOS programs. Several
companies, like
Axis and Concurrent Controls still
develop and sell it under various names.
DOS, DOS VM - IBM Mainframe operating system.
Later replaced by MVS
DOS, MS DOS, PC DOS - Operating systems for the
IBM PC, IBM PC AT and compatible Intel X86 based computers. Based on an
operating system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) purchased
by Microsoft from Seattle Computer Systems. Unfortunately, it was proved in
court to be "rather closely based" on Digital Research's CP/M.
DR DOS - A "clone" of MS DOS written by Digital
Research. Microsoft couldn't sue because DR had been given the right to clone
MS DOS when they won their court case against Microsoft / IBM, so they fought it
with money, monopoly leverage and dirty tricks, as has been shown in court.
DR DOS was superior in features and stability to MS DOS. MS DOS 5.x and 6.x
were imitations of the DR DOS 5.0 and 6.0 packages.
IOS - Internet Operating System - The operating
system used in Cisco routers. Routers are specialized computers.
Multics - Multiplexed Information and Computing
Service - A multi-computer operating system developed By MIT, AT&T's Bell Labs
and General Electric for large computers, started in 1965. The father of Unix.
For more info, here's the
FAQ. Of 82 installations, three are still running.
Xenix - Cut-down version of Unix for the weak PCs of
the day. Originally developed by Microsoft, it was spun off to the Santa Cruz
Operation (SCO). It was discontinued when PCs became plenty strong enough
to run real Unix, and finally had to be taken out of service in 1999 due to
Year 2000 problems.
Apple DOS The operating system for the Apple II
computers.
SOS - Sophisticated Operating System - Apt initials for
the operating system for the unlamented Apple III, one of Steve Job's notable
failures during his first try at running Apple.
MVS - IBM advanced operating system for System 360
mainframes.
Windows - A series of operating systems and
GUIs (Graphic User Interfaces) over operating systems from Microsoft.
Windows 1.0 Totally unusable version of Windows, a GUI (Graphic
User Interface) over MS-DOS.
Windows 386 Version 2 of Windows, now runable only on 386 and higher
computers. Not very successful.
Windows 3.0 First actually usable version of Windows. A GUI overlay
over MS-DOS.
Windows 3.1 First successful version of Windows. A GUI overlay over
MS-DOS.
Windows 3.11 A version of Windows 3.1 released specifically to break
compatibility with IBM's OS/2 for Windows (Red Box OS/2, which wrapped around
an existing Windows 3.1 install). Quickly withdrawn due to public outcry.
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 A version of Windows 3.1 that included
networking. Really bad networking, but networking nontheless.
Windows95 Successor to Windows for Workgroups 3.11. DOS was
incorporated into the package and reworked to prevent Windows from running over
DR-DOS and eliminate DR-DOS from the market.
Windows95 OSR2A mid-stream upgrade to the OEM version of Windows95
incorporating USB support (well, sort of), Encrypted passwordl and the FAT-32
file system, allowing use of larger hard disk partitions. These changes were
never incorporated in retail or upgrade versions of Windows95.
Windows 98 Windows95 with the Internet Explorer web browser
"integrated" into it in Microsoft's campaign to destroy Netscape.
Windows 98 SE Second Edition - a "bug fix" realease of Windows 98
which introduced more new bugs than it fixed old bugs.
Windows NT 3.1 The first version of Windows NT, called 3.1 "to avoid
confusion". Actually, it was named 3.1 because users wer now convinced that
version 3.1 was the first version of any Microsoft product that actually
worked. A new operating system from Microsoft with a GUI interface integrated
into it. Based on OS/2 code, it was done by programmers hired away form DEC
(Digital Equipment Corp.). Slow.
Windows NT 3.5 Bug fix release to NT 3.1.
Windows NT 4.0 Successor to NT 3.5, it had the video drivers
incorporated into "ring 0" to improve performance. It also greatly reduced
stability.
Windows NT 5.0 Renamed to Windows 2000 due to a number of embarasing
circumstances, especially because the press was unfavorably comparing the not
yet released NT 5.0 with NetWare 5.0 which was released.
Windows 2000 A complete rewrite of Windows NT (because it was
obvious even to Microsoft that Windows NT 4.0 could never be an "enterprise"
operating system. Years late, it is currently scheduled to be released on
FEB 17 2000.
Pen Windows A non-existant version of Windows announced by Microsoft
specifically to kill off Pen Computing, a company they thought might be a
competitor. It was aimed at hand held devices that use a stylus for input.
Windows CE A version of Windows designed for devices smaller than
notebook computers. Ooops - withdrawn! In keeping with their normal
practices, Microsoft has withdrawn the "CE" name due to negative image. It
was getting it's ass kicked by the Palm operating system from 3Com (which can
actually run on handheld devices) and everyone knew it.
Embeded Windows NT A scaled down version of Windows NT for industrial
devices and other "built in" applications. Wishful thinking.
CRC - Cyclic Redundancy Check - A technique to assure
data contained within a block of data is read correctly. Check bits are added
to the block of data as it is written that adjust it to make it conform to a
particular formula. When the block of data is read, the formula is applied and
if it fails, the contents of the block (or the read) are presumed incorrect.
This failure is called a CRC Error.
AAx GLOSSARY
