Asus Giga-X1005b Switch 5-Port

Product Descriptions >>
The GigaX1005B switches are an efficient, yet affordable, solution for the Home or SOHO Networks. High performance Fast Ethernet switching is provided in a stylish, compact, space-saving design. The fan-less design also ensures for a quiet and peaceful working environment. With the quality that you have come to expect from ASUS, you can rest assured that your Network will enjoy long-lasting, trouble-free connections.

Product Features >>
The Non-Blocking, Line-Speed architecture ensures maximum performance for your Network.
Highly Compatible: Complies with IEEE 802.3 (10Base-T), and IEEE 802.3u (100Base-TX) standards.
IEEE 802.3x Flow Control protects against collisions and lost packets.
100% Plug-and-Play, nothing to configure, means that you are up-and-running quickly and easily.
Auto Negotiation for Speed and Duplex ensures that you will get the maximum performance without needing to configure the switch.
Auto MDI/MDIX detects for straight or cross-over cabling.
Easy to read LED's and stylish compact casing.
All specifications are subject to change without notice. Please check with your supplier for exact offers. Products may not be available in all markets.
PCB color and bundled software versions are subject to change without notice.
Brand and product names mentioned are trademarks of their respective companies.

Canon Lide25 Flat Bed 1200x2400dpi

Product Details >>
Slender, functional and surprisingly affordable, the 1200dpi CanoScan LiDE 25 complements any creative environment. It draws all the power it needs from its USB connection, no power adaptor required!
Features
Compact, slim and stylish
USB Bus power
1200 x 2400dpi¹ with 48 bit colour depth
Scan to PDF
QARE Level 3 dust/scratch removal and backlight correction
Comprehensive software suite
3 EZ buttons
Multi-photo mode
Z-lid for thick document scanning
The affordable, stylish scanner for the home
Scanning in style Just 38mm thick, the extraordinarily slender CanoScan LiDE 25 is the obvious choice for the uncluttered desk. Because of LiDE technology’s tiny appetite for power, it does not require any clumsy power cords - a single USB cable connected to your computer is the only lead you’ll ever need. Despite its diminutive size, the LiDE 25 is big on resolution. Whether you are scanning documents or photos, the 1200 x 2400dpi¹ and 48 bit colour depth specification accurately reproduces every fine detail and subtle shade. Your pin sharp results will be suitable for enlargements and post-scan image editing. Straight to PDF A ‘Scan to PDF’ function scans documents straight to PDF (Portable Document Format), speeding up your work flow and doing away with the need for extra conversion software. A floating palette of PDF pages is created, which can be arranged or ordered at will. Text is automatically embedded in PDF files at time of scanning, allowing editing and searching.Because not everything you need to scan comes in a convenient size, the LiDE 25 incorporates an innovative double hinged Z-lid. The lid keeps an even pressure on whatever you place on the glass, making it ideal for scanning thick documents, magazines and books - even small packages.Canon’s QARE Level 3 is your on-board photo print correction system. Dust and scratches are automatically detected and corrected, saving hours of manual retouching. Faded colour, excessive graininess and poor exposure can also be corrected. Multiple photos in one scan LiDE 25’s fast and convenient Multi-Photo Mode² creates individual automatically cropped files from a single scan pass of up to 10 separate photos, business cards or other originals. It even de-skews images automatically, saving precious time that would otherwise be spent carefully aligning photos on the glass prior to scanning.Software supplied includes ArcSoft PhotoStudio image editing and OmniPage SE OCR. To help keep you organised, CanoScan Toolbox sits always-at-the-ready on your desktop, allowing you to customise the three EZ-buttons for common functions, such as copying, scanning direct to e-mail and straight to PDF.¹ Optical resolution is a measure of maximum hardware sampling resolution, based on the ISO 14473 standard.² Originals must be rectangular and placed minimum 1cm apart. Deskew feature corrects up to 10 degree slant

Intel D945gclf-Atom 230 Processor

Product Features >>
FEATURES
BOX/BLKD945GCLF
LAD945GCLF
Board series
Essential Series
Essential Series
BIOS ID string
LF94510J.86A
LF94510J.86A
AA#
E27042-xxx
E27044-xxx
Processor
Intel® Atom™ processor 230 (single core)
Intel® Atom™ processor 230 (single core)
Performance (04B/05B)/Mainstream (04A/05A) vreg support
None
None
FSB support
533 MHz
533 MHz
Processor socket
N/A
N/A
Thermal solution
Passive (fanless) for processor Active for chipset
Passive (fanless) for processor Active for chipset
Chipset
Intel 945GC with ICH7
Intel 945GC with ICH7
Integrated graphics
Yes
No
Form factor
Mini-ITX/uATX compatible
Mini-ITX/uATX compatible
Memory - maximum supported
2 GB¹
2 GB¹
Memory frequency (refer to TPS for configuration requirements)
533/667 MHz
533/667 MHz
Audio
2 + 2 channel high definition audio
2 + 2 channel high definition audio
S/PDIF
N/A
N/A
LAN controller
10/100 LAN
10/100 LAN
USB connectors
6
6
PCI slots
1
1
PCI Express* x16
N/A
N/A
PCI Express x4
N/A
N/A
PCI Express x1
N/A
N/A
SATA (ports)
2
2
eSATA (ports)
N/A
N/A
PATA (ports)
1
1
IEEE-1394a ports
N/A
N/A
TPM
No
No
Intel® Matrix Storage Technology (RAID)
No
No
Hyper-Threading Technology support
Yes
Yes
Instantly Available PC Power Management
Yes
Yes
Intel® Express BIOS update
Yes
Yes
Intel® Active Management Technology
No
No
Legacy support
No
Yes
1 year limited warranty
No
Yes
3 year limited warranty ²
Yes
Yes

Asus-Amd Crosshair Nforce 590 Sli

Product Details >>

The Republic of Gamers consists only the best of the best. We offer the best hardware engineering, the fastest performance, the most innovating ideas, and we welcome the best gamers to join in.In the Republic of Gamers, mercy rules are only for the weak, and bragging rights means everything. We believe in making statements and we excel in competitions. If your character matches our trait, then join the elite club, make your presence felt, in the Republic of Gamers.

Samsung 2333HD 23" wide screen LCD monitor

Product Descriptions >>

Be enchanted by the elegance and beauty of the SAMSUNG 2333HD monitor. With its delicately patterned design, sensuously sleek contours, and phenomenal picture quality it will deliver images that delight your eyes and bring a fresh perspective to the way that you view your world.

Epson Stylus CX2900 All-in-One Printer

Print, Scan and CopyExcellent print, scan and copy performance Irresistibly attractive photo prints at up to 5760 dpi resolution Natural colour gradation with minimum 3pl ink droplet size Print ultra-sharp text documents at home
Rs. 7,000.00 /-

Mustek BearPaw 2400 CU Plus Scanner

Scanner Type: Color Flatbed , Single Pass Scan Area: 21,6 cm x 29,7 cm Optical Resolution: 1200 dpi (H) x 2400 dpi (V) Interpolated Resolution 19200 dpi x 19200 dpi Scanning data buffer: 32 Kb (maximum) Interface: USB Voltage requirement: USB Bus Powered Dimensions: 405 x 281,5 x 37 mm (L x W x H) Weight: 1,8 Kg
Rs. 3,400.00 /-

Acer Aspire 5630 Notebook

Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz15.4 Inch Display Screen2 GB Ram160 GB Hard DriveDVD-RW Drive56.6 Lan / WIFICamera / Bluetooth
Rs. 51,990.00 /-

Dell Inspiron 1525 Notebook

Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz (T6400) 800MHz FSB, 2MB Cache 2GB Ram DDR2250GB SATA Hard Drive15.4` WXGA True Life Display CDs and DVDs 8x DVDRWGraphic Card Intel GMA 3100Bluetooth / WebCam10/100 Eathernet Card6 cell Battery
Rs. 54,900.00 /

Epson Stylus T10 Inkjet Printer

Ink System: 4-colourMax. Print Resolution: 5760x1440 dpi (with VSDT)Print Speed: 22ppm/13 ppm (BK/Colour)Max. Paper Size: A4Ink Cartridge Model: 73N and 91N seriesInterface: USB 2.0
Rs. 4,500.00 /-

Epson Stylus Photo R230 Printer

6 color individual ink cartridge 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi resolution Borderless printingSupport Direct CD Printing

Rs. 15,600.00 /-

Acer Aspire One 751h Notebook

Intel Atom Z520 (1.33GHz / 512 Cache / 533FSB) / 11.6` LED Crystal Bright HD 1366 x 768 Pixel Resolution / UMA / 1GB DDR / 160GB HDD / 802.11bg / 5-in-1 Card Reader / SD card slot / 6 cell battery (7 hrs battery life i.e. whole day battery) / 0.3DV Crystal Eye / Bluetooth / XP Home / Slip Case / Full Size English Keyboard / Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting / Circular-motion scrolling / Pinch-action zoom / UK Cord / 1.35Kg

Rs. 49,500.00 /-

AGneovo 17-inch TFT H-17 LCD

Diagonal Size: 17 inch Square with MultimediaColor: Black Color Support: 16.7M Max Resolution: 1280x1024 Dot Pitch: 0.264mm Device Type: LCD Compliant Standards: TCO''''03 Analog Video Signal: Analog Contrast Ratio: 1000:1 Vertical viewing Angle: 160 Horizontal viewing Angle: 160

Rs. 10,800.00 /-

HP COMPAQ dx2390 Business PC (KM635AV)

Offer Information

Brand :
HP
Category :
Desktops
Sub Category :
Any Sub Category
Offer Title :
HP COMPAQ dx2390 Business PC (KM635AV)
Offer Details :
• Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 Processor(2.5GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB Cache)• Intel G31 Express Chipset• 1GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 RAM• 250GB SATA 7200RPM Hard Disk• 16x SuperMulti DVD-RW with Light-Scribe• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator• Realtek ALC662 High Definition Audio• Realtek 10/100Mbps Ethernet Controller• HP PS/2 Standard Keyboard• HP PS/2 Optical Scroll Mouse• DOS Operating System• 1 Year Warranty
New / Used ?
New
Price :
Rs. 32,000.00 /-

HP COMPAQ dx7500 Business PC (FN839AV)

Offer Information

Brand :
HP
Category :
Desktops
Sub Category :
Any Sub Category
Offer Title :
HP COMPAQ dx7500 Business PC (FN839AV)
Offer Details :
• Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 Processor(2.66GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB Cache)• Intel G45 Express Chipset• 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 RAM• 160GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive• 16x SATA DVD-RW Drive • Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD• Realtek ALC888S High Definition Audio• Intel WG82567V Gigabit NIC• HP PS/2 Standard Keyboard• HP PS/2 Optical Scroll Mouse• MS Windows XP Pro (Vista downgrade to XPP)• 3 Years Warranty
New / Used ?
New
Price :
Rs. 52,000.00 /-

HP 6720s Business Notebook (KZ935PA)

Offer Information

Brand :
HP
Category :
Notebooks
Sub Category :
Any Sub Category
Offer Title :
HP 6720s Business Notebook (KZ935PA)
Offer Details :
• Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz) Processor• Mobile Intel 965GME Chipset• 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2-667 SDRAM• 120GB SATA Hard Disk• DVD-RW Dual Layer Drive with Light-Scribe• 15.4` WXGA Bright View Display• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100• Intel Fast Ethernet 10/100 LAN + 56k V.92 Modem• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN + Bluetooth• Touch Pad with Scroll Zone + Secure Digital Slot• Free DOS Operating System• 1 Year Warranty• FREE HP Carrying Case
New / Used ?
New
Price :
Rs. 58,000.00 /-

Price of HP4510s Business Notebook

Offer Information

Brand :
HP
Category :
Notebooks
Sub Category :
Any Sub Category
Offer Title :
HP 4510s Business Notebook (VA073PA)
Offer Details :
• Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz) Processor• Mobile Intel GM45 Express Chipset• 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 SDRAM (1 DIMM)• 250GB 5400 RPM SMART SATA II Hard Disk• DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL LightScribe Drive• 15.6` HD BV Display 16:9 (1366 x 768 resolution)• Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD• Marvell Ethernet 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN• 56k V.92 Modem + Media Card Reader• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g + Bluetooth + Touch Pad • Disk Sanitizer + HP SpareKey + 3D Drive Guard• Integrated 2.0 MP Webcam + Microphone• Microsoft Windows Vista Business C/W XPP• 1 Year Warranty• FREE HP Carrying Case
New / Used ?
New
Price :
Rs. 82,000.00 /-

Contact Information
Name :
Continental Establishment
City :
Karachi
Email :
Sorry You must login to Send Email / Contact User
User Type :
Wholesaler
Company Name :
Continental Establishment
Contact No :
021-2634308, 2627427
Contact Person :
Perkash / Fariha Yaseen / Irfan Baig
Office Timings :
10am - 7pm

The Keyboard

Like the mouse, the keyboard is a means of interacting with your computer. You really only need to use the keyboard when you're typing text. Most of the keys on the keyboard are laid out like the keys on a typewriter. But there are some special keys like Esc (Escape), Ctrl (Control), and Alt (Alternate). There are also some keys across the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3, and so forth. Those are called the function keys, and the exact role they play depends on which program you happen to be using at the moment.
Most keyboards also have a numeric keypad with the keys laid out like the keys on a typical adding machine. If you're accustomed to using an adding machine, you might want to use the numeric keypad, rather than the numbers across the top of the keyboard, to type numbers. It doesn't really matter which keys you use. The numeric keypad is just there as a convenience to people who are accustomed to adding machines. Most keyboards also contain a set of navigation keys. You can use the navigation keys to move around around through text on the screen. The navigation keys won't move the mouse pointer. Only the mouse moves the mouse pointer.
On smaller keyboards where space is limited, such as on a notebook computer, the navigation keys and numeric keypad might be one in the same. There will be a Num Lock key on the keypad. When the Num Lock key is "on", the numeric keypad keys type numbers. When the Num Lock key is "off", the navigation keys come into play. The Num Lock key acts as a toggle. Which is to say, when you tap it, it switches to the opposite state. For example, if Num Lock is on, tapping that key turns it off. If Num Lock is off, tapping that key turns Num Lock on.
Combination Keystrokes (Shortcut keys)
Those mysterious Ctrl and Alt keys are often used in combination with other keys to perform some task. We often refer to these combination keystrokes as shortcut keys, because they provide an alternative to using the mouse to select menu options in programs. Shortcut keys are always expressed as:
key1+key2
where the idea is to hold down key1, tap key2, then release key1. For example, to press Ctrl+Esc hold down the Ctrl key (usually with your pinkie), tap the Esc key, then release the Ctrl key. To press Alt+F you hold down the Alt key, tap the letter F, then release the Alt key.

The Mouse

Obviously you know how to use your mouse, since you must have used it to get here. But let's take a look at the facts and buzzwords anyway. Your mouse probably has at least two buttons on it. The button on the left is called the primary mouse button, the button on the right is called the secondary mouse button or just the right mouse button. I'll just refer to them as the left and right mouse buttons. ManyThe idea is to rest your hand comfortably on the mouse, with your index finger touching (but not pressing on) the left mouse button. Then, as you move the mouse, the mouse pointer (the little arrow on the screen) moves in the same direction. When moving the mouse, try to keep the buttons aimed toward the monitor -- don't "twist" the mouse as that just makes it all the harder to control the position of the mouse pointer.
If you find yourself reaching too far to get the mouse pointer where you want it to be on the screen, just pick up the mouse, move it to where it's comfortable to hold it, and place it back down on the mousepad or desk. The buzzwords that describe how you use the mouse are as follows:
Point: To point to an item means to move the mouse pointer so that it's touching the item.
Click: Point to the item, then tap (press and release) the left mouse button.
Double-click: Point to the item, and tap the left mouse button twice in rapid succession - click-click as fast as you can.
Right-click: Point to the item, then tap the mouse button on the right.
Drag: Point to an item, then hold down the left mouse button as you move the mouse. To drop the item, release the left mouse button.
Right-drag: Point to an item, then hold down the right mouse button as you move the mouse. To drop the item, release the right mouse button. mice have a small wheel between the two mouse buttons

What is Hardware?

Your PC (Personal Computer) is a system, consisting of many components. Some of those components, like Windows XP, and all your other programs, are software. The stuff you can actually see and touch, and would likely break if you threw it out a fifth-story window, is hardware.Not everybody has exactly the same hardware. But those of you who have a desktop system, like the example shown in Figure 1, probably have most of the components shown in that same figure. Those of you with notebook computers probably have most of the same components. Only in your case the components are all integrated into a single book-sized portable unit.

The system unit is the actual computer; everything else is called a peripheral device. Your computer's system unit probably has at least one floppy disk drive, and one CD or DVD drive, into which you can insert floppy disks and CDs. There's another disk drive, called the hard disk inside the system unit, as shown in Figure 2. You can't remove that disk, or even see it. But it's there. And everything that's currently "in your computer" is actually stored on that hard disk. (We know this because there is no place else inside the computer where you can store information!).

Operating systems

Supercomputer operating systems, today most often variants of Linux,[1] are at least as complex as those for smaller machines. Historically, their user interfaces tended to be less developed, as the OS developers had limited programming resources to spend on non-essential parts of the OS (i.e., parts not directly contributing to the optimal utilization of the machine's hardware). These computers, often priced at millions of dollars, are sold to a very small market and the R&D budget for the OS was often limited. The advent of Unix and Linux allows reuse of conventional desktop software and user interfaces.
Interestingly this has been a continuing trend throughout the supercomputer industry, with former technology leaders such as Silicon Graphics taking a back seat to such companies as AMD and NVIDIA, who have been able to produce cheap, feature-rich, high-performance, and innovative products due to the vast number of consumers driving their R&D.
Until the early-to-mid-1980s, supercomputers usually sacrificed instruction set compatibility and code portability for performance (processing and memory access speed). For the most part, supercomputers to this time (unlike high-end mainframes) had vastly different operating systems. The Cray-1 alone had at least six different proprietary OSs largely unknown to the general computing community. Similarly different and incompatible vectorizing and parallelizing compilers for Fortran existed. This trend would have continued with the ETA-10 were it not for the initial instruction set compatibility between the Cray-1 and the Cray X-MP, and the adoption of UNIX operating system variants (such as Cray's Unicos) and today's Linux.
In the future, the highest performance systems are likely to use a variant of Linux but with incompatible system-unique features (especially for the highest-end systems at secure facilities).[citation needed]

Visual display unit

A visual display unit (or monitor) is a piece of electrical equipment, usually separate from the computer case, which displays viewable images generated by a computer without producing a permanent record. The word "monitor" is used in other contexts; in particular in television broadcasting, where a television picture is displayed to a high standard. A computer display device is usually either a cathode ray tube or some form of flat panel such as a TFT LCD. The monitor comprises the display device, circuitry to generate a picture from electronic signals sent by the computer, and an enclosure or case. Within the computer, either as an integral part or a plugged-in interface, there is circuitry to convert internal data to a format compatible with a monitor. The images from monitors originally contained only text, but as Graphical user interfaces emerged and became common, they began to display more images and multimedia content.

Home theater PC

A home theater PC (HTPC) is a convergence device that combines the functions of a personal computer and a digital video recorder. It is connected to a television or a television-sized computer display and is often used as a digital photo, music, video player, TV receiver and digital video recorder. Home theater PCs are also referred to as media center systems or media servers. The general goal in a HTPC is usually to combine many or all components of a home theater setup into one box. They can be purchased pre-configured with the required hardware and software needed to add television programming to the PC, or can be cobbled together out of discrete components as is commonly done with MythTV, Windows Media Center, GB-PVR, SageTV, Famulent or LinuxMCE.

Netbook

Netbooks are small portable computers in a "clamshell" design, that are designed specifically for wireless communication and access to the Internet. They are generally much lighter and cheaper than subnotebooks, and have a smaller display, between 7" and 9", with a screen resolution between 800x600 and 1024x768 but newer models feature higher resolution at up to 1280x768 like the Gigabyte M912X netbook. The operating systems and applications on them are usually specially modified so they can be comfortably used with a smaller sized screen, and the OS was in the start Linux, although most netbooks run one of the NT version, Windows XP or Windows Vista (For example Sony's Tablet Netbook). Some netbooks make use of their built in high speed Wireless connectivity to offload some of their applications software to Internet servers, through the principle of Cloud computing, as most have small solid state storage systems instead of hard-disks. Storage capacities were usually in the 4 to 16 GB range but have largely increased expanding up to 160GB for example the Gigabyte M912X and the MSI WInd U100 with units that have hard drives instead of solid state drives. One of the first examples of such a system was the original Eee PC.

Pocket PC

A pocket PC is a hardware specification for a handheld-sized computer (personal digital assistant) that runs the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system. It may have the capability to run an alternative operating system like NetBSD or Linux. It has many of the capabilities of modern desktop PCs.
Currently there are tens of thousands of applications for handhelds adhering to the Microsoft Pocket PC specification, many of which are freeware. Some of these devices also include mobile phone features. Microsoft compliant Pocket PCs can also be used with many other add-ons like GPS receivers, barcode readers, RFID readers, and cameras. In 2007, with the release of Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft dropped the name Pocket PC in favor of a new naming scheme. Devices without an integrated phone are called Windows Mobile Classic instead of Pocket PC. Devices with an integrated phone and a touch screen are called Windows Mobile Professional.[17]

Tablet PC

A tablet PC is a notebook or slate-shaped mobile computer, first introduced by Pen computing in the early 90s with their PenGo Tablet Computer and popularized by Microsoft. Its touchscreen or graphics tablet/screen hybrid technology allows the user to operate the computer with a stylus or digital pen, or a fingertip, instead of a keyboard or mouse. The form factor offers a more mobile way to interact with a computer. Tablet PCs are often used where normal notebooks are impractical or unwieldy, or do not provide the needed functionality.

Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600: 1966–1977

In 1962, Seymour Cray opened a Control Data Corporation laboratory near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where he led the design of the CDC 6600 computer. This machine, which was announced in 1964, sold for around $7 million and was the first computer designed in the Chippewa Falls area.
The CDC 6600 is believed to have been the first computer to be designated as a "supercomputer," offering the fastest clock speed for its day (100 nanoseconds). It was one of the first computers to use Freon refrigerant cooling and was also the first commercial computer to use a CRT console. (CDC checkout engineers created computer games such as Baseball, Lunar Lander, and Space Wars, which became incentives for getting the machines operational. These are thought to be the first computer games that used monitors.)
NCAR accepted delivery of a CDC 6600 in late December 1965. The machine was operated for nearly a year at the 30th street location in Boulder until the Mesa Laboratory was ready in December 1966.
The CDC 6600 was a large-scale, solid-state, general-purpose computing system. It had a distributed architecture (central scientific processor supported by ten very fast peripheral machines) and was a reduced instruction set (RISC) machine many years before such a term was invented.
Input to the computer was by punch cards or seven-channel digital magnetic tape. Output was available from two line printers, a card punch, a photographic plotter, and standard magnetic tape. An interactive display console allowed users to view graphical results as data were being processed.

The CDC 6600 had 65,000 60-bit words of memory. It was equipped with a large disk storage device and six high-speed drums as storage intermediate in speed and accessibility between the central core storage and magnetic tapes. The 6600 supported the FORTRAN 66 compiler and a program library.
The CDC 6600 was decommissioned in 1977.

Ferrite Core Memory

The development of core memory, which became widely used in computers by the early 1960s, was a significant event in the history of memory technology. The first person to substantially contribute to this development was physicist An Wang, but a group of scientists working under Jay Forrester were also pivotal in making the memory system practical. Prior to the invention of core memory, the main types of memory in use were electrostatic and magnetic drum memory, and, less often, mercury delay line memory. In comparison to these more antiquated forms of technology, core memory offered substantially greater memory-holding capabilities and a more practical size. Core memory, which was generally produced by low-paid industrial workers assembling arrays by hand, also eventually became reasonably priced, dropping to about one-hundredth of its original value before it was eventually replaced by silicon memory in the 1970s. Even after the rise of silicon, however, core memory was utilized for many years in certain critical applications because it is non-volatile, retaining its content even when its power supply is discontinued.

BIOS Chip In An Epoxy Package

In computers, the Basic Input-Output System, or BIOS, is built-in software that determines what a particular machine can do without accessing programs from a disk. Usually found on a ROM chip that is included with the computer, the BIOS is designed to make it possible for a computer to boot and load its operating system without being in risk of becoming damaged by disk failures or other hardware or software problems. A computer’s BIOS is also responsible for performing a power-on self test to make sure all hardware is working correctly and providing an array of simple routines that the operating system uses to interface with different hardware components, such as the keyboard, mouse, and screen, as well as activating any other BIOS chips on graphics cards or other cards installed in the computer. For many years, BIOS chips were unable to be altered, but since the 1990s, a computer’s BIOS is often stored on devices that can be upgraded by the user. Though this change provides added flexibility, a computer may be rendered inoperable if a BIOS update is not properly completed.

Seagate Barracuda Controller Card

Founded in 1979, Seagate was the first company to manufacture 5.25-inch hard disk drives specifically for the personal computer. The introduction of these drives, which made it feasible to readily store and access data in ways that were never previously possible, was one of the forces behind the computer revolution that occurred during the 1980s. Once people became accustomed to retrieving unparalleled amounts of information, it was only a matter of time before the Internet was developed and eventually achieved the tremendous popularity that it holds today. Seagate’s hard disk drive products are the mainstay of the company’s success, and are available in several different lines or families. Part of the Barracuda family, Seagate’s U Series has reportedly sold more units than any other disk drive in the history of personal computers. Often integrated into consumer electronic devices, many people are not even aware that they are using Barracuda drives, but the state-of-the-art components have been the choice of many of the industry’s top brands, being featured in such popular products as Microsoft’s Xbox game system.

Intel 4004 Microprocessor

In the early 1950s, after UNIVAC became available, there were only about 100 computers in operation worldwide. By the year 2000, 54 million households in the United States alone contained one or more computers. What is perhaps even more astonishing is the fact that these machines had more capacity in a single silicon chip than the entire ENIAC system that was such a crucial step along the way to contemporary computers. A host of technological advances are responsible for such a drastic change in capability and for making computers feasible for personal use. A computer's memory in the early 1960s, for instance, was typically a ferrite core memory, an architecture that relied on the magnetization of small iron ferrite doughnuts (ferrite cores) to store information. Depending upon the direction of the energizing current, the cores would become magnetized in either a clockwise (0) or counterclockwise (1) direction. When reading the value of the core, the direction of the current was used to determine whether the value of information held by the core was 0 or 1, the binary information used by the computer. The development and subsequent improvements of the integrated circuit, however, revolutionized computer design. Indeed, in former times, each ferrite core represented one digit, or bit, and the total memory of a computer was considered in terms of thousands of bytes (kilobytes), while contemporary semiconductor devices correspond to millions of bytes, or megabytes, and the total memory of a mainframe may be measured in billions of bytes (gigabytes).

20 Megabyte Hard Disk Platter

Despite its relation to early mechanical calculating devices, the modern computer is often credited with first being conceived by Charles Babbage, an English mathematician, in the 1830s. The calculating machine he designed was never successfully built in his lifetime, however. Approximately a century after Babbage's attempts, the first general-purpose analog computer was constructed by Vannevar Bush, an American physicist and engineer, who called his invention a differential analyzer. The earliest known semielectronic digital calculating machine appeared shortly thereafter in 1939, the same year that Howard Aiken of Harvard University began developing the Mark I calculator, a pioneering fully automatic device. The subsequent decade saw the completion of the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC), which is recognized as the first all-electronic universal digital computing device. Built by and for the United States Army, ENIAC was a behemoth compared to modern machines, containing more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing approximately 30 tons, and occupying a large room. The Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC), which was a successor of ENIAC built by the same team, became the first computer sold for commercial use and utilized a metal tape input system rather than the punch card system of earlier machines.

Surface of a Bon Jovi CD

Computers Under the Microscope
The Computer Collection contains an assortment of photomicrographs illustrating the various parts that may be found in everyday computers. However, items such as microprocessors, compact disks, and hard drives are relatively recent developments. Early predecessors of modern computers, such as the slide rule and abacus, were simple devices that did not contain such an array of components. Yet, each of these early computing devices represents a primitive form of one of the two basic kinds of computers familiar today, analog and digital. The slide rule, for instance, is comprised of graduated scales mounted so that their relative movement enables simple calculations to be carried out via mechanical means. Since the device represents numbers by variable physical quantities rather than by discrete digits, the slide rule works by the same basic principle of more advanced analog computers. The abacus, however, enables calculations through the manipulation of counters whose positions indicate discrete numerical values. Similarly, modern digital computers, which are commonly referred to simply as "computers" today since they have come to be the dominant technology in the field, essentially function via the manipulation of discrete binary digits (1s and 0s).

Qsan iSCSI R6 Controllers

iSCSI RAID Controller Solutions Green Cabling & Backplane Storages

IBM 9071 SP1 (wildhorse): 1993–1997

The IBM 9071 SP1, IBM's first scalable parallel machine, was installed at NCAR in August 1993. It was acquired with funds from the National Science Foundation's High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program.
The SP1 belonged to a new generation of products based on IBM RISC System/6000 technology, providing users with simultaneous parallel and serial processing capabilities. Called "wildhorse, the SP1 was experimental and used to evaluate performance and ease of use for parallel processing of large simulations.
The SP1 consisted of a sever node plus a frame containing eight processor nodes. The server node was an RS/6000 Model 980 with 512 megabytes of memory, 4 gigabytes of internal disk space, 8 gigabytes of external disk space, and communications facilities.
All of the eight processor nodes were RS/6000 Model 370s containing 128 megabytes of memory and 1 gigabyte of internal disk space. The SP1 additionally had an RS/6000 Model 220 that functioned as a system monitor.

Output of the SP1 was ~26 megaflops on a single processor, which was multiplied by an estimated .15 efficiency for parallel use.
Software included math libraries, the Distributed Queueing System (DQS) for batch job submittal, Cray conversion routines, the Fortran 90 XLF compiler, and Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM).
Wildhorse was decommissioned in 1997.

HP Exemplar (sioux): 1997–1999

NCAR acquired a 64-processor HP Exemplar SPP2000 (sioux) in summer 1997 as part of a joint research and development project with Hewlett-Packard's Convex Division. The project was part of NCAR's effort to stay abreast of new computing architectures (toward which end NCAR has also worked throughout the years with a variety of other vendors).
NCAR procured the system using High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) money to study the performance of algorithms used in atmosphere/ocean/ice simulations on cache-coherent, distributed shared-memory (DSM) machines. Also studied was the effort required to port existing vector multiprocessor codes to DSM systems.
This research was important because of the possibility that DSM architectures would be the only type available for future U.S. supercomputing. Models being run at NCAR and other U.S. centers would have to be constructed to efficiently execute on these new architectures.

Sioux had 64 processors, 4 hypernodes, 8 gigabytes of memory, 270 gigabytes of disk, a clock rate of 180 MHz, and HIPPI connectivity to the Mass Storage System. It ran the SPP-UX operating system and supported Fortran 77 Fortran 90, C, and C++ compilers. It offered mathematical and statistical software as well as directive-based shared memory parallelism, message passing, and explicit thread-based parallelism.
The system was decommissioned on May 14, 1999.

SGI Origin 3800 (chinook): 2002–2004

On 25 July 2002, a new SGI Origin 3800 system named chinook was made available for users. The new machine was binary compatible with ute, the Origin 2000 it replaced, and had the same number of processors but twice the clock speed, four times the memory, and more than double the disk capacity.
Chinook had 128 500-MHz R14000 processors, a clock speed of 500 megahertz, 65 gigabytes of distributed shared memory, and 580 gigabytes of disk space. It was fitted with a HiPPI connection to the Mass Storage System and gigabit Ethernet to NCAR networks.
Also included in the chinook complex was an 8-processor SGI Origin 2100 named chinookfe, which functioned as a front end to chinook.
The chinook complex was allocated as part of the Climate Simulation Laboratory (CSL).
Both chinook and chinookfe were decommissioned on 30 August 2004, as SCD SCD investigated newer compute servers with better price performance

IBM p575 (bluefire): 2008–present

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has taken delivery of a new IBM supercomputer on April 24, 2008, that will advance research into severe weather and the future of Earth's climate. The supercomputer, known as a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster, is the first in a highly energy-efficient class of machines to be shipped anywhere in the world.
Scientists at NCAR and across the country will use the new system to accelerate research into climate change, including future patterns of precipitation and drought around the world, changes to agriculture and growing seasons, and the complex influence of global warming on hurricanes. Researchers also will use it to improve weather forecasting models so society can better anticipate where and when dangerous storms may strike.
Named "bluefire," the new supercomputer has a peak speed of more than 76 teraflops (76 trillion floating-point operations per second). When fully operational, it is expected to rank among the 25 most powerful supercomputers in the world and will more than triple NCAR's sustained computing capacity.
"Bluefire is on the leading edge of high-performance computing technology," says Tom Bettge, director of operations and services for NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. "Increasingly fast machines are vital to research into such areas as climate change and the formation of hurricanes and other severe storms. Scientists will be able to conduct breakthrough calculations, study vital problems at much higher resolution and complexity, and get results more quickly than before."
Researchers will rely on bluefire to generate the climate simulations necessary for the next report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which conducts detailed assessments under the auspices of the United Nations. The IPCC was a recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
"NCAR has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in deploying supercomputing resources to address really difficult challenges," says Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. "Bluefire will substantially expand the organization's ability to investigate climate change, severe weather events, and other important subjects."
Bluefire is the second phase of a system called the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation (ICESS) at NCAR. After undergoing acceptance testing, it will begin full-scale operations in August. Bluefire, which replaces three supercomputers with an aggregate peak speed of 20 teraflops, will provide supercomputing support for researchers at NCAR and other organizations through 2011.
An IBM Power 575 supercomputer, bluefire houses the new POWER6 microprocessor, which has a clock speed of 4.7 gigahertz. The system consists of 4,064 processors, 12 terabytes of memory, and 150 terabytes of FAStT DS4800 disk storage.

How PCI Express Works

Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots are such an integral part of a computer's architecture that most people take them for granted. For years, PCI has been a versatile, functional way to connect sound, video and network cards to a motherboard.
But PCI has some shortcomings. As processors, video cards, sound cards and networks have gotten faster and more powerful, PCI has stayed the same. It has a fixed width of 32 bits and can handle only 5 devices at a time. The newer, 64-bit PCI-X bus provides more bandwidth, but its greater width compounds some of PCI's other issues.
A new protocol called PCI Express (PCIe) eliminates a lot of these shortcomings, provides more bandwidth and is compatible with existing operating systems. In this article, we'll examine what makes PCIe different from PCI. We'll also look at how PCI Express makes a computer faster, can potentially add graphics performance, and can replace the AGP slot.

NVIDIA Tesla Personal Supercomputer

Get your own supercomputer. Experience cluster level computing performance—up to 250 times faster than standard PCs and workstations—right at your desk. The NVIDIA® Tesla™ Personal Supercomputer is based on the revolutionaryNVIDIA ® CUDA™ parallel computing architecture and powered by up to 960 parallel processing cores.

ZOTAC IONITX