Serial ATA

Often abbreviated SATA or S-ATA, an evolution of the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. Serial ATA is a serial link — a single cable with a minimum of four wires creates a point-to-point connection between devices. Transfer rates for Serial ATA begin at 150MBps. One of the main design advantages of Serial ATA is that the thinner serial cables facilitate more efficient airflow inside a form factor and also allow for smaller chassis designs. In contrast, IDE cables used in parallel ATA systems are bulkier than Serial ATA cables and can only extend to 40cm long, while Serial ATA cables can extend up to one meter.

Serial ATA supports all ATA and ATAPI devices.

Serial Storage Architecture

Abbreviated as SSA, Serial Storage Architecture  is an open industry-standard interface that provides a high-performance, serial interconnect technology used to connect disk devices and host adapters. SSA serializes the SCSI data set and using loop architecture that requires only two wires: transmit and receive. The SSA interface also supports full-duplex, so it can transmit and receive data simultaneously at full speed.

C-RIMM – Continuity-RIMM

C-RIMM is short for Continuity-RIMM.

Since there cannot be any unused RIMM slots on a motherboard, a C-RIMM is a special module used to fill any unused RIMM slots. It is basically a RIMM module without any memory chips.

Visual Basic

A programming language and environment developed by Microsoft. Based on the BASIC language, Visual Basic was one of the first products to provide a graphical programming environment and a paint metaphor for developing user interfaces. Instead of worrying about syntax details, the Visual Basic programmer can add a substantial amount of code simply by dragging and dropping controls, such as buttons and dialog boxes, and then defining their appearance and behavior.

Although not a true object-oriented programming language in the strictest sense, Visual Basic nevertheless has an object-oriented philosophy. It is sometimes called an event-driven language because each object can react to different events such as a mouse click.

Since its launch in 1990, the Visual Basic approach has become the norm for programming languages. Now there are visual environments for many programming languages, including C, C++, Pascal, and Java. Visual Basic is sometimes called a Rapid Application Development (RAD)system because it enables programmers to quickly build prototype applications.

Visual C++

An application development tool developed by Microsoft for C++ programmers. Visual C++ supports object-oriented programming of 32-bit Windows applications with an integrated development environment (IDE), a C/C++ compiler, and a class library called the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). The IDE includes an AppWizard, ClassWizard, and testing features to make programming easier. Visual C++ was introduced in 1993, and Release 4.0 became available in 1996.

cHTML

(pronounced as separate letters) Short for compact HTML, a subset of HTML for small information devices, such as smart phones and PDAs. cHTML is essentially a pared down version of regular HTML over the Internet. Because small devices such as cellular phones have hardware restrictions such as small memory, low power CPUs, limited or no storage capabilities, small mono-color display screens, single-character font and restricted input methods (the absence of a keyboard or a mouse), there is a need for a simpler form of HTML.

Because of the limitations of small information devices, cHTML does not support JPEG images, tables, image maps, multiple fonts and styles of fonts, background colors and images, frames, style sheetsand more than two colors, typically black and white.

cHTML is defined so that all the basic operations can be done by a combination of four buttons and not by two-dimensional cursormovement: cursor forward, cursor backward, select, and back/stop. The functions that require two-dimensional cursor pointing, like “image map” and “table,” are excluded from cHTML.

cHTML was created by Japan-based Access Company, Ltd. for use in i-mode devices, and was accepted by the W3CM in 1998. cHTML has been fading into obsolescence as XHTML gains acceptance and replaces cHTML.

BASIC

Acronym for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Developed by John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz in the mid 1960s at Dartmouth College, BASIC is one of the earliest and simplest high-level programming languages. During the 1970s, it was the principal programming language taught to students, and continues to be a popular choice among educators.

Despite its simplicity, BASIC is used for a wide variety of business applications. There is an ANSI standard for the BASIC language, but most versions of BASIC include many proprietary extensions. Microsoft’s popular Visual Basic, for example, adds many object-oriented featuresto the standard BASIC.

Recently, many variations of BASIC have appeared as programming, or macro, languages within applications. For example, Microsoft Word and Excel both come with a version of BASIC with which userscan write programs to customize and automate these applications.

C

A high-level programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the mid 1970s. Although originally designed as a systems programming language, C has proved to be a powerful and flexible language that can be used for a variety of applications, from business programs to engineering. C is a particularly popular language for personal computer programmers because it is relatively small — it requires less memory than other languages.

The first major program written in C was the UNIX operating system, and for many years C was considered to be inextricably linked with UNIX. Now, however, C is an important language independent of UNIX.

Although it is a high-level language, C is much closer to assembly language than are most other high-level languages. This closeness to the underlying machine language allows C programmers to write very efficient code. The low-level nature of C, however, can make the language difficult to use for some types of applications.