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Interface and bus glossary
Published on 10/31/97 This Netpanel special feature will
define and explain a wide variety of interfaces and buses used in personal computers. To
start off, an interface, in this context, is a data path between two separate devices in
your computer. A bus is similar; in fact, you can think of a bus as a data highway
connecting different components of your system. Now we will move on to specific types of
buses and interfaces.
- Serial port
A type of interface in which only 1 bit of data is transferred at a time. Mice and modems
are usually connected to serial ports, which are also referred to as COM ports.
- Parallel port
A type of interface that allows more than 1 bit of data to be processed at once. Printers
are the most common peripheral devices connected to parallel ports.
- PS/2
Another type of port (or interface) that can be used to connect mice and keyboards to the
computer. The PS/2 port is sometimes called the mouse port.
- USB (Universal Serial Bus)
A new type of external bus contending to replace serial and parallel ports. Many devices
can be connected to USB ports, which support Plug-and-Play and hot-swapping. USB transfers
data at speeds of 12 Mbps (megabits per second).
- FireWire (IEEE 1394)
Another new type of external bus, which supports very fast transfer rates: 400 Mbps.
Because of this, FireWire is suitable for connecting video devices, such as VCRs, to the
computer.
- SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)
A type of parallel interface that is commonly used for mass storage devices. SCSI can
transfer data at rates of 4 MB/sec.; in addition, there are several varieties of SCSI that
support higher speeds: Fast SCSI (10 MB/sec.), Ultra SCSI and Fast Wide SCSI (20 MB/sec.),
as well as Ultra Wide SCSI (40 MB/sec.).
- IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics)
This is a commonly used interface for hard disk drives and CD-ROM drives. It is less
expensive than SCSI, but offers slightly less in terms of performance.
- EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics)
An improved version of IDE, which offers better performance than standard SCSI. It offers
transfer rates between 4 and 16.6 MB/sec.
- ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)
The original form of ISA was a simple and slow 8-bit bus used on IBM PCs. Eventually, the
ISA connector was stretched to allow 16-bits of data to pass through each clock cycle,
bringing its speed to between 8 and 10 MHz. ISA slots are used to connect expansion boards
to the motherboard.
- EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture)
This is an enhanced form of ISA, which allows for 32-bit data transfers, while maintaining
support for 8- and 16-bit expansion boards. However, its bus speed, like ISA, is only 8
MHz. EISA is not widely used, due to its high cost and complicated nature.
- MCA (Micro Channel Architecture)
This is a proprietary bus used in early IBM machines as a replacement for ISA. It is
slightly superior to EISA, but not many expansion boards were ever made to fit MCA
specifications.
- VLB (VESA Local Bus)
This type of bus was developed as an alternative to ISA, in order to support the better
performance graphics cards of the 486 era. VLB is a 32-bit bus, which runs at speeds
between 25 and 50 MHz.
- PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect)
This type of internal bus is the most commonly used in today's systems. It is a 32-bit bus
that supports rates of 33 MHz; newer specs allow for 64-bit transfers at 66 MHz. Many
modern expansion boards are connected to PCI slots.
- AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)
This new interface, designed by Intel, is based on the 66 MHz PCI specification. AGP is
geared towards data-intensive graphics cards, such as 3D accelerators; its design allows
for data throughput at rates of 266 MB/sec.
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