Early vintage computer buses have their influences on your computer today

The term “expansion bus “is a frequent term in vintage computer terminology which requires elaboration. Much of the legacy of vintage bus systems are in our current computer systems today.

To begin with the “expansion bus" is a data highway for computer data information to travel on: the bandwidth is in essence the number of lanes. The bigger the bandwidth the more data can be sent. As examples, an 8 megabyte bandwidth means that data can be sent in 8 bits chunks. Our current systems use between 32 bit and now 64 bit bandwidth.

An expansion bus is where cards connect to the computer; Cards have an expansion edge, which fits snugly into the bus much like an electrical plug fits into a wall socket.

When cards are plugged into the bus, they communicate with the system, sometimes through the BIOS and others not. (The BIOS is the basic input /output system that tells the computer how to move data from the different components.) The 8, 16 or 32 bit bandwidth is an important consideration due to communication time between the cards. For example you have a 16 bit vintage 286 PC and it is sending out data at 16 bits a: your video card is also 8 bits. If you have an older 8 bit bus, such as in early IBM PCs and clones, the bus will become a bottleneck in the system; it is like having a 4 lane highway connected to another 4 lane highway by way of a 1 lane road. At most times regardless of the faster 4 lane highway traffic will be slow – limited by the single lane connection road.

There were basically 3 types of expansion bus available in vintage computers: ISA, MCA, EISA systems.

Each early development in major ways paved the way for the later systems which indeed we take for granted today. This was both in terms of hardware and basic concepts in our computer systems and technology as well as computer marketing that we take for granted today as simple basic facts of life without any consideration due.

Basically the newer buses offered increased performance over the older technology buses.

The basic explanations of the buses are as follows:

The 3 bus standards to note were Industry Standard Architecture (ISA).Micro Channel Channel Architecture (MSA) and Extended Industry Standard (EISA) bus systems.

Industry Standard Architecture (ISA). This was the original AT bus also called an ISA bus. It was the original 8 bit IBM PC bus which was bumped up to 16 bits at some point in its later development. Fine for a 16 bit 286 or very early 386 computers

Micro Channel Architecture (MSA). This was an early 32 bit bus system which was not received well but set the stage for an industry consortium of the major non IBM computer manufacturers ( at the time referred to as “The Group of Nine) to develop the EISA standard bus.

Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA). The EISA bus standard was a standard of its own right which was 32 bit, included bus mastering and importantly remained compatible with previous older expansion cards. 32 bit systems were first to incorporate in later 386 systems. The 486 line solidified and standardized the 32 bit systems in the established software of the day.

Backward compatibility at the time was a novel new concept which has remained an important consideration in the computer industry.

EISA slots would accommodate both the ISA and EISA expansion slots to allow hardware upgrades, However the EISA expansion boards would be of little advantage and would seldom work in the older ISA expansion slots.

On the other hand the Micro Channel setup was not backward compatible. On the one hand the Micro Channel developers were free to initiate new radical changes in computer development and hardware which would have allowed for major new useful features in computer software. However owners of previous systems would have been left with then obsolete vintage useless hardware which would have been of no use and certainly little financial value.

Hence there was a lot of resistance to the Micro Channel bus setup.

It died a lingering death with its legacy living on in the aspirations of features offered in future developments and standards.

Thus the die was set for future hardware standards and software function as well as standard computer marketing concepts that we take for granted like mother’s milk today.

The ringtone craze - ringtones of all shapes and sizes

Almost everyone owns a cell phone these days. People are probably more likely to be homeless than to not have a cell phone. Some people, like me, have more than one cell phone, usually one cell phone is for personal use, and the other one is for business. Cell phones are getting smaller and smaller, but they are also gaining more and more features. There are many cell phones available that can take pictures, send and receive email, open up Microsoft Word documents, and download ringtones to your phone. These ringtones allow you to hear a very unique sound when your cell phone rings. Ringtones are now available in a variety of different types and styles.

Right now I have a ringtone on my personal cell phone that plays musical tones that sound like the Blue Oyster Cult song “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. I have never heard anyone else’s cell phone with this particular ringtone before, so I feel like my cell phone ringtone is one of a kind. This particular ringtone is not actually the words and instruments from this song, but it is comprised of digital tones that match the song very closely. This type of ringtone is one of the earlier versions that were available online. I downloaded this song from a web site that sells a six month subscription to their site for a fixed price, and they allow you to download as many ringtones as you want during the subscription period.

One of the biggest crazes today is to have ringtones with song playing on your cell phone. These types of ringtones sound very good, because they are just as clear as the real song. Many different web sites offer this type of ringtone, which you can buy as a single ringtone, or download as part of a subscription. You can find almost any new release available as a ringtone, but some of these web sites have actually journeyed back into the past and made many older songs available also. Whatever your personality is, you can now find a ringtone to suit it.

The pros and cons of using document scanner software

Paper is vulnerable to the elements. Although in the past, it has proven its worth as a medium for the storage of human knowledge, the fact remains that people today see paper as insufficient for their needs. It is because of this that a lot of people are converting their documents from paper to computer data. One of the ways they do this is through document scanner software.

Document scanner software is said to be able to speed up the task of encoding documents considerably. Instead of having to type on a keyboard, all you have to is scan the pages. This saves a lot of time and a lot of resources. As you may know, typing the document can take a pretty long time. It is also very hard work. This means that you will be spending both time and effort in transferring those documents into disk. The only way you won't spend time and energy would be to pay someone to type for you. This means that you would be spending money.

By buying document scanner software, you would be able to avoid unnecessary expenses. This means that you would ber able to increase the resource allocation for your profit-making activities. That is the best thing you can do in business: proper resource management.

By buying document scanner software, you would be able to make sure that you do not waste time and energy on something that can be done by technology. However, you should learn not to depend on technology too much.

You need to understand how document scanner software works. You see, the scanner doesn't actually read words from the document. Actually, the scanner takes what some may call pictures of each page. The format for photographs, unfortunately cause too much file size to be occupied by a page. This means it is not actually practical to scan an image of a document page and save it as that.

What the document scanner program does is locate the text in the image, recognize it, and convert it into a format which takes up less disk space. This also allows people to edit the text that is written in a document. Technology, no matter how amazing, however, still is not perfect. There are certain times when the document scanner software won't be able to recognize the text clearly.

There are many reasons for this. It may be that the recognition system of the document scanner software does not have enough information to encode a certain font. In cases like these, the document scanner program may attempt to compensate by interpreting characters to their nearest likeness. Because of this, the resulting document scan is flawed.

Another common error made by document scanner software arises from the fact that the program will attempt to convert any sort of writing on a piece of paper into computer data. This means that it can interpret any physical damage or deterioration on the paper as writing. A tiny speck of dust can turn into a punctuation mark.

You need to weigh the benefits and risks of document scanner software carefully. Only by doing so will you be able to arrive at the right decision. Should you go slowly but surely, or do you feel the need for speed? The answer is within you.

Killacodes website

There are many people who own the websites; mostly the websites are for business etc. There are very few websites that are entertainment based. Killacodes is one of them and it is to entertain the traffic that comes to the website. Its culture, design and lay out are so different to the other websites on the net.

Killacodes also probably specifically suits the teenage group, where the teenagers are crazy about visual arts/photography, graphic pictures and things like that. On the website there is a tag for myspace icon, myspace layout which is now very familiar amongst the teenagers and other young people interested in Myspace.

Killacodes also helps make friends through myspace and so you can take all the opportunity that you have to grab it and make friends on myspace as well. On the website there is also an icon for Ringtones, Icon strips, funny content, and layout stealer and so on, these are some of the things that can interest young people.

The Partner links for Killacodes are Myspace layouts, hot myspace layouts and myspace codes. By clicking on the link they easily go to the website where there is much more that you can see, there are different types of layouts like, animal layout to television layouts and the link to it is revolutionmyspace. com/ , apart from the layouts you can easily find much more entertaining stuff which will keep you entertained for a while. If you need a break and you need to play a game than you can test your trivia skills by playing trivia for free on that website.

If you like Flash toys than you can find more than 30 of all kinds of Flash toys of your interest. The website is very entertaining and it is worth taking a peep to the website.

Hot Myspace layouts icon takes you to the best Free Hot Myspace layouts accounts and you go into any account of your choice which you fancy the most, it is linked with topmyspacesite. com/ and it has lots of Myspace, Hi5, Xanga and Tag world layouts along with graphics and codes.

There is one more partner icon and that is Myspace codes it takes you to the mycodesite. com and again the website is interesting and is designed with images, layouts, games, tweaks, movies, cursors. This site is interesting especially the graphics of the site is very interesting and appealing to the eyes.

Killacodes website is full time entertainment and you can never be bored with all its features it has to offer its viewers. So if ever you want to take a break from your work or whatever you are doing than log yourself on to killacodes to take a look at different graphics and entertainment that you like.

Four common web designing mistakes

Web designing is not just about putting up a web site and hoping it will get enough traffic. And, while it is okay to reflect your personality through your web site, you need to remember that that is only a small part of web designing. Web designing is more about catering to your target audience and reflecting what it is they want to see. A person may stumble upon your website by pure accident but it is high-quality web designing that usually creates customer loyalty and keeps them coming back time and again.

Here then are four of the most common mistakes made by amateur web designers:

Bad Search

Search engines are fine tuned and tweaked to such an extent that, in a way, their usability has been reduced. Such search engines are sometimes unable to process hyphens, plurals or typos, creating problems for its various users especially the elderly. Since most Internet users depend on searches to find what they what, it is best to keep it simple and easy to use.

Use of PDF Files

Most people browsing the internet hate PDF files, preferring to skip the site altogether and it is easy to understand why. PDF files break the flow of internet browsing. They do not respond to standard browser commands and it is impossible to select data to save or print. To get even a tiny selection of data, the entire PDF file will have to be saved or printed.

Retaining the Color of Visited Links

Links are an important factor when navigating the internet. With no color difference between visited and unvisited links, internet browsers could find themselves re-visiting the same sites again and again.

Web sites that look like advertisements

Most experienced web users have learnt to ignore banners, pop-ups, animation and any other flashing message that distracts them from their goal. Designing your web site to look like an advertisement only ensures that it will get shut down before it even loads on to the computer screen.