Parallel ATA (PATA), originally AT Attachment, also known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. The connection is used for storage devices such as hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, optical disc drives, and tape drives in computers.
A motherboard is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems, such as the central processor, the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for general use.
A de facto standard is a custom or convention that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces. De facto is a Latin phrase, here meaning "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established".
SATA is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard to become the predominant interface for storage devices.
Power connector may refer to:
Zero insertion force (ZIF) is a type of IC socket or electrical connector that requires very little force for insertion. With a ZIF socket, before the IC is inserted, a lever or slider on the side of the socket is moved, pushing all the sprung contacts apart so that the IC can be inserted with very little force - generally the weight of the IC itself is sufficient and no external downward force is required. The lever is then moved back, allowing the contacts to close and grip the pins of the IC. ZIF sockets are much more expensive than standard IC sockets and also tend to take up a larger board area due to the space taken up by the lever mechanism. Typically, they are only used when there is a good reason to do so.
A DC connector is an electrical connector for supplying direct current (DC) power.
ATX is a motherboard and power supply configuration specification, patented by David Dent in 1995 at Intel, to improve on previous de facto standards like the AT design. It was the first major change in desktop computer enclosure, motherboard and power supply design in many years, improving standardization and interchangeability of parts. The specification defines the dimensions; the mounting points; the I/O panel; and the power and connector interfaces among a computer case, a motherboard, and a power supply.
Each generation of floppy disk drive (FDD) began with a variety of incompatible interfaces but soon evolved into one de facto standard interface for the generations of 8-inch FDDs, 5.25-inch FDDs and 3.5-inch FDDs. For example, before adopting 3.5-inch FDD standards for interface, media and form factor there were drives and media proposed by Hitachi, Tabor, Sony, Tandon, Shugart and Canon.
A disk enclosure is a specialized casing designed to hold and power hard disk drives or solid state drives while providing a mechanism to allow them to communicate to one or more separate computers.
In the era of IBM compatible personal computers, the AT form factor comprises the dimensions and layout of the motherboard for the IBM AT. Baby AT motherboards are a little smaller, measuring 8.5" by 13". Like the IBM PC and IBM XT models before it, many third-party manufacturers produced motherboards compatible with the IBM AT form factor, allowing end users to upgrade their computers for faster processors. The IBM AT became a widely copied design in the booming home computer market of the 1980s. IBM clones made at the time began using AT compatible designs, contributing to its popularity. In the 1990s many computers still used AT and its variants. Since 1997, the AT form factor has been largely supplanted by ATX.
Berg connector is a brand of electrical connector used in computer hardware. Berg connectors are manufactured by Berg Electronics Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, now part of Amphenol.
An insulation-displacement contact (IDC), also known as insulation-piercing contact (IPC), is an electrical connector designed to be connected to the conductor(s) of an insulated cable by a connection process which forces a selectively sharpened blade or blades through the insulation, bypassing the need to strip the conductors of insulation before connecting. When properly made, the connector blade cold-welds to the conductor, making a theoretically reliable gas-tight connection.
A SCSI connector is used to connect computer parts that use a system called SCSI to communicate with each other. Generally, two connectors, designated male and female, plug together to form a connection which allows two components, such as a computer and a disk drive, to communicate with each other. SCSI connectors can be electrical connectors or optical connectors. There have been a large variety of SCSI connectors in use at one time or another in the computer industry. Twenty-five years of evolution and three major revisions of the standards resulted in requirements for Parallel SCSI connectors that could handle an 8, 16 or 32 bit wide bus running at 5, 10 or 20 megatransfer/s, with conventional or differential signaling. Serial SCSI added another three transport types, each with one or more connector types. Manufacturers have frequently chosen connectors based on factors of size, cost, or convenience at the expense of compatibility.
A computer fan is any fan inside, or attached to, a computer case used for active cooling. Fans are used to draw cooler air into the case from the outside, expel warm air from inside and move air across a heat sink to cool a particular component. Both axial and sometimes centrifugal (blower/squirrel-cage) fans are used in computers. Computer fans commonly come in standard sizes, such as 92 mm, 120 mm, 140 mm, and even 200–220 mm. Computer fans are powered and controlled using 3-pin or 4-pin fan connectors.
The i-RAM was a PCI card-mounted, battery-backed RAM disk that behaved and was marketed as a solid-state storage device. It was produced by Gigabyte and released in June 2005, at a time when genuine solid-state storage solutions were generally still less affordable than an i-RAM product with superficially similar capabilities. Since the i-RAM used DRAM, which is volatile memory, and it had a lithium-ion battery on board, though it only needed to fall back on battery backup power when the computer it was installed in was unplugged or completely turned off, as the card was able to draw power sufficient for RAM refresh from the PCI bus, which still has standby power present even when an ATX machine is shut down. The contents of the DRAM could however only be preserved for a limited amount of time after the power supply was fully interrupted.
A power supply unit (PSU) converts mains AC to low-voltage regulated DC power for the internal components of a computer. Modern personal computers universally use switched-mode power supplies. Some power supplies have a manual switch for selecting input voltage, while others automatically adapt to the main voltage.
Computer case screws are the hardware used to secure parts of a PC to the case. Although there are numerous manufacturers of computer cases, they have generally used three thread sizes. The Unified Thread Standard (UTS) originates from the United States, while the ISO metric screw thread is standardized worldwide. In turn, these thread standards define preferred size combinations that are based on generic units—some on the inch and others on the millimetre.
In computing, eSATAp is a combination connection for external storage devices. An eSATA or USB device can be plugged into an eSATAp port. The socket has keyed cutouts for both types of device to ensure that a connector can only be plugged in the right way.
On June 26, 2007, Dell released the new Inspiron desktop series, under the Dell Inspiron branding, as a replacement to the Dell Dimension desktop computers.
