List of the System Unit

• Expansion Card

An expansion card is a printed circuit board that can be installed in computer to add functionality to it. For example, a user may add a new graphics card to his computer to give it more 3D graphics processing power. An audio engineer may add a professional sound card to his machine to increase the computer's audio input and output connections. Users that need more Firewire or USB ports can add Firewire or USB expansion cards, which provide additional connections.

• Network Interface Card (NIC)

An NIC (network interface card) is an expansion card that provides connectivity between a PC and a network such as a LAN, NICs are sometimes called ethernet adapters. Network Interface Cards (NICs) can be internal or external add-ons and come with various specifications, one of which is transfer rate although most modern network interface cards support up to 100Mbps, and the more expensive Gigabit ethernet cards supporting up to 1000Mbps.

• Plug & Play

Plug and Play (PnP) is a capability developed by Microsoft for its Windows 95 and later operating systems that gives users the ability to plug a device into a computer and have the computer recognize that the device is there. The user doesn't have to tell the computer. In many earlier computer systems, the user was required to explicitly tell the operating system when a new device had been added. Microsoft made Plug and Play a selling point for its Windows operating systems. A similar capability had long been built into Macintosh computers. With Microsoft's participation, Plug and Play has been replaced by an open, industry standard, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which uses Internet protocols for seamless device plug-in.

• Sockets

Sockets is a method for communication between a client program and a server program in a network. A socket is defined as "the endpoint in a connection." Sockets are created and used with a set of programming requests or "function calls" sometimes called the sockets application programming interface (API). The most common sockets API is the Berkeley Unix C interface for sockets. Sockets can also be used for communication between processes within the same computer.

• Chips

"Chip" is short for microchip, the incredibly complex yet tiny modules that store computer memory or provide logic circuitry for microprocessors. Perhaps the best known chips are the Pentiummicroprocessors from Intel. The PowerPC microprocessor, developed by Apple, Motorola, and IBM, is used in Macintosh personal computers and some workstations. AMD and Cyrix also make popular microprocessor chips. There are quite a few manufacturers of memory chips. Many special-purpose chips, known as application-specific integrated circuits, are being made today for automobiles, home appliances, telephones, and other devices.

• Slots

In computers, a slot, or expansion slot , is an engineered technique for adding capability to a computer in the form of connection pinholes (typically, in the range of 16 to 64 closely-spaced holes) and a place to fit an expansion cardcontaining the circuitry that provides some specialized capability, such as video acceleration, sound, or disk drive control. Almost all desktop computers come with a set of expansion slots. These help ensure that you'll be able to add new hardware capabilities in the future.

• Serial Port

Serial ports are a type of computer interface that complies with the RS-232 standard. They are 9-pin connectors that relay information, incoming or outgoing, one byte at a time. Each byte is broken up into a series of eight bits, hence the termserial port.

• Universal Serial Bus Port

Short for Universal Serial Bus, an external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of 12 Mbps. A single USB port can be used to connect up to 127 peripheral devices, such as mice, modems, and keyboards. USB also supports Plug-and-Play installation and hot plugging.

• Firewire Port

Firewire ports are forms of a serial port that make use of FireWire technology to transfer data rapidly from one electronic device to another. The FireWire port has been in common use since 1995, when Apple, Inc. first began to include the porton a number of digital camcorders. Today, the FireWire port is used on a number of other devices.