system vocab

Mainframes- perform multiple takss for man y users simultaneously usually for large corporations or organizations.

Supercomputers- meet this need by processing trillions of calculations per second.
Minicomputers- were common in the 1970s ans 1980s.

Professional workstation-meets the needs of users requiring more computing power than a personal computers yet less than a minicomputer.

IBM-Compatible Computers- when ibm;s personal computers computer hit the maket in 1981 it was readily accepted by most people in the business world becuase of ibm's reputation as a quality manufacturer of mainframecomputers.

Apple Computers-unlike ibm apple corporation started out as a personal computer manfacturing company.

Hardware-encompasses all the physical components of a computer system.

System unit-is the case that houses the the computers internal processing circuitary including the motherboard, disk drives, power supply, plug in boards, and internal sperker.

Motherboards- all computer circuitry is connected to the main circuit board.

CPU- residing on the motherboard.ROM-chips have insructions and data built into them.

RAM-chips store data only temporarily all information is erased when the computer in turned off.

Input devices-are enternal to the systems unit and are attached to it using specific connectors and ports.

Output devices- show you the results of the computers processing.Hard drive-the storage device at the heart of most computer systems.

Flash memory-smartmedia and compactflash cards store megabytes of data on small thin retangular cards using a type of chip.

Platform-the combinnation of a specific type of computer system and a of version of operatig system.

Operating system-the software program that oversees and controls everything that happens while your computer is turend on.

user interface-the way in which the user interacts with the computer.

Sntax-the systems the user must type commands using particlar keywords punctuation syobols.

GUI-the command line charter-based interface.microsoft windows- microsoft corporation introduced its own graphical user interface.

Mac OS-apple computer was the first to bring a gui to personal computer users in the early 1980s.

Linux- a powerful opreration system for pc,s based on unix.

Utility programs-the other part of the system software preform behind the scenes duties that are important.

Viruses-are small pieces of unauthorized program code written to invade hard drives.