AC
(Alternating Current) The common form of electricity from power plant to home/office. Its
direction is reversed 60 times per second in the U.S.; 50 times in Europe. Contrast with DC.
ALU
Arithmetic-Logic Unit.
AMD
(Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) A manufacturer of x86-compatible CPUs. AMD has
become a competitor to Intel and its chips are used by many PC makers, including Compaq. Chips with
the Am486, K5, K6 and K7 Athlon CPU's are made by AMD.
AMI
American Megatrends Inc.
ANSI
American National Standards Institute.
ASIC
Application Specific Integrated Circuit.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Pronounced "ask-ee." A binary code
for text as well as communications and printer control. It is used for most communications and is
in the built-in character code in most minicomputers and all personal computers.
ASPI
(Advanced SCSI Programming Interface) An interface
from Adaptec, Inc., that provides a common language between drivers and SCSI host
adapters (Adaptec company website www.adaptec.com).
ATA
AT bus Attachment.
ATAPI
(AT Attachment Packet Interface). The interface specification for
IDE drives. ATAPI defines the
specification for CD-ROMs and tape drives.
ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode.
ATDM
Asynchronous Time Division Multiplexing.
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