( Acronym - a word formed from the initial letters of other words )
AMSTRAD-Allan Michael Sugars TRADing
ANSI - American National Standards Institute
ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange
ATA - Advanced Technology Attachment. ATA is also known as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) in the disc drive industry.
ATAPI - AT Attachment Program Interface
ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode
AUI - Attachment Unit Interface
BEDO - Burst Extra Dynamic Output
BIOS - Basic Input Output System
BNC - Bayonet Navy Connector, British Naval Connector, Bayonet Neill Concelman, or Bayonet Nut Connection.
CMOS - Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. CMOS semiconductors use both NMOS (negative polarity) and PMOS (positive polarity) circuits. Personal computers also contain a small amount of battery - powered CMOS memory to hold the date, time, and system setup parameters.
CSMA/CD - Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection
DB - Data Bus
DCE - Data Communications Equipment. E.g. a modem
DDO - Dynamic Drive Overlay. Software to allow a system BIOS that does not support
DMA - Direct Memory Access
Logical Block Addressing to access drives larger than 528 MB
DDR - Double Data Rate
DHCP - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DIMM - Dual Inline Memory Module
DIN - Device Identification Number(also called AT connector)
DIP(switch) - Dual In - Line Package switch
DMA - Direct Memory Access
DNS - Domain Name System
DRAM - Dynamic Random Access Memory
DSL - Digital Subscriber Line
DTE - Data Terminal Equipment E.g. a computer
DVI - Digital Visual Interface
ECC - Error Checking and Correction
EDO - Extra Dynamic Output
EISA - Extended Industry Standard Architecture
ESCD - Extended System Configuration Data
FCPGA - Flip Chip Pin Grid Array
FPM - Fast Page Memory
FSB - Front Side Bus
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
GHOST - General Hardware Oriented System Transfer
HONDA - Heaps of Nerds do Acronyms
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language
ICMP - Internet Control Message Protocol
IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics. IDE is used to describe a device with built in ATA protocol electronics.
IEEE - Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers
IETF - Internet Engineering Task Force
IP - Internet Protocol
IPX/SPX - Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange
IRQ - Interrupt Request
ISA - Industry Standard Architecture
ISDN - Integrated Services Digital Network
ISO - International Standards Organisation
JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
LASER - Light Amplification Stimulated Emission Radiaton
MIDI - Musical Instrument Digital Interface
Mini DIN - also called PS/2 from first computer to use Mini DIN connection.
MMX - Multimedia Extension
NDIS - Network Device Interface Specification(Microsoft/3Com)
NetBEUI - NetBIOS Extended User Interface
NTSC - National Television System Committee
ODI - Open Data link Interface mostly used with Novell systems
OSI - Open Systems Interconnect model
OSI - Open Systems Interconnection model
PAL - Phase Alternation Line
PCB - Printed Circuit Board
PCI - Peripheral Component Interface
PCL - printer control language
PCMCIA - Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. A trade association responsible for the promotion of removable device interfaces for a variety of products including memory, modems, and discs.
PHP - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (recursive acronym)
PCRE - PERL Compatible Regular Expresion
PING - Packet Internet Groper
POSIX - Portable Operating System Interface (not a true acronym)
POST - Power On Self Test
PPD - Parallel Presence Detect
PPGA - Plastic Pin Grid Array
PSU - Power Supply Unit
RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RDRAM - Rambus Dynamic Random Access Memory
RIP - Routing Information Protocol
RJ45 - Registered Jack 45 (8 wire connector used in networking)
SCSI - Small Computer Systems Interface.
SDRAM - Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory
SGML - Standard Generalized Markup Language
SIMM - Single Inline Memory Module
SLIP - Serial Line Internet Protocol
SMB - Server Message Block
SPD - Serial Presence Detect
SRAM - Static Random Access memory
TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
TFT - Thin Film Transistor
TSR - Terminate Stay Resident programs; loaded into upper memory at boot up and only executed when needed
UART - Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter
UMB - Upper Memory Block
VCI - Virtual Channel Identifier
VFAT - Virtual File Allocation
VPI - Virtual Path Identifier