Basic+technology+terms

Definitions of basic terms (compiled January 26, 2009)

These terms are defined here (use Ctrl-F to find them):
 * 1) 8086
 * 2) 8088
 * 3) Algorithm
 * 4) Analytical engine
 * 5) ARPANET
 * 6) Base 10
 * 7) Binary numbers
 * 8) Bitmap
 * 9) BIOS
 * 10) Boot process
 * 11) Bus
 * 12) Bytes and bits
 * 13) CMOS
 * 14) COBOL
 * 15) Compiler
 * 16) Compression
 * 17) CPU
 * 18) Data processing
 * 19) FORTRAN
 * 20) Graphical User Interface
 * 21) Hexidecimal numbers
 * 22) Hypertext
 * 23) Internet
 * 24) Integrated circuit
 * 25) Linux
 * 26) Logarithm
 * 27) Logical disk
 * 28) Microprocessor
 * 29) Object-oriented programming
 * 30) Oscillator


 * 8088**- An Intel 8086 computer contained the 8088. It was also the processor used in the original IBM PC.


 * Byte**-is a basic unit of measurement of information storage in computer science. In many computer architectures it is a unit of memory addressing. There is no standard but a byte most often consists of eight bits. (The term "byte" comes from "bite," as in the smallest amount of data a computer could "bite" at once.)


 * Bit**-(b) is a binary digit. A bit is also a unit of information that asks a yes-or-no question. A computational quantity that can take on one of two values, such as false and true or 0 and 1. A bit is also the smallest unit of storage - sufficient to hold one bit.


 * Hypertext**- A term coined by Ted Nelson around 1965 for a collection of documents containing links, which with the aid of an interactive browser program, allowed the reader to move easily from one document to another. The extension of hypertext to include other media - sound, graphics, and video - has been termed "hypermedia", but is usually just called "hypertext", especially since the advent of the World-Wide Web and HTML.


 * CPU** - The part of the computer that knows and remembers how to operate and how remember the amswers it computes. Basically, the brain of the computer. The CPU is made up of millions of tiny switches that can on of off. The switches are defined as 0(zero) for off and 1(one) for on. These switches are binary numbers.


 * Binary Numbers** - The basic parts of a computer are the central processing unit (CPU), memory, a keyboard or other input device and a screen or other output device. sounds simple, doesn't it? But how does the computer know how to add and subract, and how can its memory remember the answers it computes? We know that the computer doesn't have a real brain inside. It fact, it is made up mostly of plastic, metal and silicon. Yet, a computer acts in many ways as though it does have a real brain.

To find the answer, we must take a close look at how we understand numbers. We have ten digits in our number system: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Digit is a fancy word for a single number. It's interesting that digit also means a finger or toe. A number system based on ten is called a decimal system.

Computers don't use the ten digits of the decimal system for counting and arithmetic. Their CPU and memory are made up of millions of tiny switches that can be either ON or OFF. Two digits, 0 and 1, can be used to stand for the two states of ON and OFF. So we can see that computers could work with a number system based on two digits. This type of system is called a binary numbering system. How does this type of number system work? First, let's look more closely at our own decimal system. As you have learned in your arithmetic classes, our decimal system is based on place, or location. That is, the place of each digit tells you the value of that digit. For example, the number 17 has a 7 in the one's place and a 1 in the ten's place. In other words, 1 en plus 7 ones equals 17. The number 138 has a 1 in the hundred's place, a 3 in the ten's place, and an 8 in the one's place. Written in numerals this is (1X100) + (3X10) + (8X1)=138.

The binary system works in exactly the same way, except that its place value is based on the number two. In the binary system, we have the one's place, the two's place, the four's place, the eight's place, the sixteen's place, and so on. Each place in the number represents two times (2X's) the place to its right.

Here's a comparison of decimal and binary numbers:

Decimal Binary Decimal Binaary

0 0 6 110

2 10 7 111

3 11 8 1000

4 100 9 1001

5 101 10 1010

Since the computer is really made up of tiny switches that can be either OFF or ON, you can look at a binary number as a series of light switches. A 1 represents a switch that is ON, and a 0 means a switch tha is OFF.

As you can see, numbers can become rather longin the binary system. For example, to show the number 10, we need four light switches, or four places. However, the real switches inside a computer are tiny and they are able to turn on and off very rapidly. The binary number system suits a computer extremely well.


 * Logical Disk** - A logical disk is a device that provides an area of usable storage capacity on one or more physical disk drive components in a computer system. Other terms that are used to mean the same thing are partition, logical volume, and in some cases a virtual disk (vdisk).

The disk is described as logical because it does not actually exist as a single physical entity in its own right. There are many ways to define a logical disk or volume. Most modern operating systems provide some form of logical volume management which allows the creation and management of logical volumes.

In a modern home PC environment, disk drives now provide hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity which can be impractical to use as a single entity. Therefore most systems have their drives partitioned into multiple logical drives.

between the time that the user powers up the computer and when the GUI icons appear on the desktop?
 * Boot Process** - The typical computer system boots over and over again with no problems, starting the computer's operating system (OS) and identifying its hardware and software components that all work together to provide the user with the complete computing experience. But what happens

From the moment a user turns on a Mac OS X system to beyond the time the login window appears, Mac OS X executes a boot sequence that readies the system for use. If you provide system services to all users, you might need to execute some code during this process. The following sections explain the basic boot sequence and the places where your code can tie into it.

Contents: BootROM BootX, boot.efi, and System Initialization Authenticating Users Configuring User Sessions Logout Responsibilities Identifying the Scope of Processes The Shutdown Process


 * Graphical User Interface** - A graphical user interface (GUI, IPA: /ˈguːɪ/) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with electronic devices such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment. A GUI offers graphical icons, and visual indicators, as opposed to text-based interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation to fully represent the information and actions available to a user. The actions are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements.


 * Oscillator** - An electronic oscillator is an electronic circuit that produces a repetitive electronic signal, often a sine wave or a square wave.

A low-frequency oscillator (LFO) is an electronic oscillator that generates an AC waveform at a frequency below ≈200 Hz. This term is typically used in the field of audio synthesizers, to distinguish it from an audio frequency oscillator. Oscillators designed to produce a high-power AC output from a DC supply are usually called inverters.

Oscillation is the repetitive variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples include a swinging pendulum and AC power. The term vibration is sometimes used more narrowly to mean a mechanical oscillation but sometimes is used to be synonymous with "oscillation." Oscillations occur not only in physical systems but also in biological systems and in human society.

Oscillators are important in many different types of electronic equipment. For example, a quartz watch uses a quartz oscillator to keep track of what time it is. An AM radio transmitter uses an oscillator to create the carrier wave for the station, and an AM radio receiver uses a special form of oscillator called a resonator to tune in a station. There are oscillators in computers, metal detectors and even stun guns.

- Intel 8086 Processor released in 1979, processor used in original IBM PC (allowed for consumer computing) - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_886) Accessed 1.26.09
 * 8086**

- A Bus is a part of the computer that physically connects different periphals/computer components uses the same set of wires. Think of a bus like a switchboard that could handle a mad volume of calls on the same line. (determines the amount of things you can add on/connect to a micro-processor/CPU) - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bus#First_generation) Accessed 1.26.09
 * Bus**

- A “human” friendly representation of computer code with a combination of numbers and letters. 0-9 represent 0-9 and A-F represent 1-15 (Building blocks for human computer programming) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal) Accessed 1.26.09
 * Hexidecimal Numbers**

For more information, visit- http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/
 * Analytical engine**- A mechanical computer which was conceived of in 1837 by Charles Babbage. His invention was so “ahead of the times”, it was never built, however it was found that after the first electronic computers had been built, Babbage had anticipated almost every aspect of the modern design of a basic computer.


 * COBOL**- One of the oldest programming languages still in active use. It is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language. It is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.


 * Integrated Circuit**- A miniature electronic circuit that is embedded into thin, semiconductor material. They are found in microchips, motherboards, and almost every modern electronic device.


 * Algorithm**: a precise rule (or set of rules) specifying how to solve some problem. The term algorithm is used in a variety of fields, including mathematics, computer programming, and linguistics. Its most well-accepted definition is something that consists of a finite list of instructions (which are well defined) that can be used to accomplish a task.


 * CMOS** (pronounced “see-moss”) is a major class of integrated circuits. Two important characteristics of CMOS devices are high noise immunity and low static power consumption. Significant power is only drawn when the transistors in the CMOS device are switching between on and off states. Stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor.


 * Internet**: a global system of interconnected computer networks that exchange data by packet switching using the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP – communication standards/protocols). The Internet is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. (wikipedia.org)


 * Base 10**- decimal notatation writing numbers in the base of 10 numeral system.


 * Compression**-encoding information while reducing the bandwidth or bits required.


 * Logorithm**- How many of one number do we multiply to get another number. In mathematics, the logarithm of a number to a given base is the power exponent to which the base must be raised in order to produce the number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to the base 10 is 3, because 3 is how many 10s you must multiply to get 1000: thus 10 × 10 × 10 = 1000.

ARPAnet protected the flow of information between the military installations by creating a network of geographically separated computers that that could exchange information via a newly developed protocol (rule for how computers interact) called NCP (Network Control Protocol). This was used by the US Department of Defense
 * ARPANET**- Advanced Research Projects Agency Network

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code (HTML) written in a computer language into another computer language. This is used to create a program
 * Compiler**

Linux is a free Unix-type operating system. It was developed under the GNU General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone.
 * Linux**


 * Bitmap**: a type of image file made up of pixels (small pieces of information in an image).


 * Data Processing**: a series of operations performed on data by a computer in order to retrieve or transform or classify information.


 * Microprocessor**: the computer's main brain, the control center for the computer; central processing unit.

In computing, the Basic Input/Output System (**BIOS**)[1], also known as the System BIOS, is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface for IBM PC Compatible computers.[2]

The BIOS is boot firmware, designed to be the first code run by a PC when powered on. The initial function of the BIOS is to identify, test, and initialize system devices such as the video display card, hard disk, and floppy disk and other hardware. This is to prepare the machine into a known state, so that software stored on compatible media can be loaded, executed, and given control of the PC.[3] This process is known as booting, or booting up, which is short for bootstrapping.

BIOS programs are stored on a chip and are built to work with various devices that make up the complementary chipset of the system. They provide a small library of basic input/output functions that can be called to operate and control the peripherals such as the keyboard, text display functions and so forth. In the IBM PC and AT, certain peripheral cards such as hard-drive controllers and video display adapters carried their own BIOS extension ROM, which provided additional functionality. Operating systems and executive software, designed to supersede this basic firmware functionality, will provide replacement software interfaces to applications


 * Fortran** (previously FORTRAN[1]) is a general-purpose,[2] procedural,[3] imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. Originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, Fortran came to dominate this area of programming early on and has been in continual use for over half a century in computationally intensive areas such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), computational physics, and computational chemistry. It is one of the most popular languages in the area of High-performance computing and programs to benchmark and rank the world's fastest supercomputers are written in Fortran[4].


 * Object-oriented programming (OOP)** is a programming paradigm that uses "objects" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as encapsulation, modularity, polymorphism, and inheritance. It was not commonly used in mainstream software application development until the early 1990s. Many modern programming languages now support OOP.