( 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
