A collection of information about PCs - at this stage only the 'common or garden type' of x86 PCs are covered. Some of this stuff dates from a past that mercifully has long gone - we keep the older pages for historical reasons, to remind us of what the PC world was like and because some folks still are stuck with legacy PC equipment used for specialized functions.
| DIN and Mini-DIN |
Includes AT style keyboard, AT to Mini-DIN, Serial Mouse, Serial to PS/2 (Mini-DIN) mouse. Pretty much all legacy stuff these days. USB rules. |
| LANs |
From 10base-T to the nose-bleedingly fast 10GBase-T. |
| Monitors, Video, Multi-Media |
Pinouts and descriptions. Includes VGA (15 & 9 pin), CGA, EGA (9 pin), DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt. |
| printer port |
The Legacy IBM DB25 printer port pin-out. Big, but not as big as a Centronics printer port. |
| DB9 Serial |
Big section on DB9/25 RS232 serial port pin-outs. |
| Centronics |
The standard (!) Centronic printer pin-out. If anyone is old enough to remember. And big, now that was a seriously big connector. |
| USB & Firewire |
The serial external interfaces - USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and Firewire (IEEE 1394). |
| Interfaces |
For reasons of cost (and size), the PC, laptop, tablet, phablet, slate, phone (and anything else which is rectangualr with rounded corners). This page lists and compares various PC interfaces, characteristics and speeds - covers SCSI, SATA, USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, Ethernet, DVI, Thunderbolt and a bunch of other stuff. |
| Screen Resolutions |
PC and TV screen resolutions. Covers aspect ratios, bandwidth requirements and refresh/frame rates. More dots per second than you can shake a stick at, but fast, my goodness, fast. |
