Hardware information

An assortment of information and tutorials about hardware in general and PC hardware in particular.

General information:

	A Chronology of Events in the History of Microcomputers A history of microcomputers from 1947 to the present day.    ¤  5 Jan 2001. Reproduced by permission. Home site: http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/
	The PC Hardware FAQ General PC hardware information from the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware newsgroups (e.g. comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc).    ¤  10 Nov 1997. Reproduced under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Home site: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/part1/
	BIOS Survival Guide An excellent tutorial on PC hardware and optimising your BIOS settings.    ¤  30 May 1997. Reproduced by permission. Home site: http://www.lemig.umontreal.ca/bios/bios_sg.htm (now gone)
	Tom's Hardware Page An excellent external site with lots of information about hardware.
	Building your own PC If you don't want to buy a ready-made system, or if you fancy upgrading your machine, look here for advice.

Processors:

	Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present A description of microprocessors from the Intel 4004 up to the present day.    ¤  Jun 2001. Freely redistributable. Home site: http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~bayko/cpu.html
	The PC Chip List A guide to the different processors used in personal computers.    ¤  26 Jul 1998. Freely redistributable for non-commercial purposes. Home site: http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~offerman/chiplist.html
	The Motorola 68000 Series FAQ Information about the various members of the 68000 family.    ¤  30 Sep 1995. Freely redistributable for non-commercial purposes. Home site: http://www.ee.ualberta.ca/archive/m68kfaq.html
	SMS An x86 simulator for students for Windows which can be run normally or single stepped, with simulated traffic lights, seven segment displays, a heater and thermostat, a stepper motor, a lift and a snake in a maze (!).    ¤  Feb 1998. Shareware. Home site: http://www.samphire.demon.co.uk/
	VMac A Macintosh emulator for Windows. The drawback is that you have to take a copy of a real Mac's system ROM (instructions for doing this are included). Another project (see the home site, below) is working on an open source implementation of the Mac toolkit to avoid this problem.    ¤  Mar 1999. Freeware. Home site: http://www.vmac.org/
	Basilisk II A free Macintosh emulator for Windows. The drawback is that you have to take a copy of a real Mac's system ROM (instructions for doing this are included). Source code is also available.    ¤  Mar 1999. Free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Home site: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/B2Main.html
	68K Edit A Motorola 68000 editor, assembler and simulator for Windows.    ¤  Jan 1999. Freeware. Home site: http://xrmx.simplenet.com/programs/68000/ ((now gone))

Storage devices:

	The Storage FAQ Information about storage devices of all kinds taken from the newsgroup comp.arch.storage.    ¤  18 Sep 1997. Reproduced by permission. Home site: http://alumni.caltech.edu/~rdv/comp-arch-storage/FAQ-1.html
	The Enhanced IDE FAQ Information about IDE and EIDE devices.    ¤  23 Jan 1998. Freely redistributable. Home site: http://thef-nym.sci.kun.nl/~pieterh/storage.html
	A CDROM Technical Summary An excellent explanation of how CD-ROMs actually work.    ¤  Mar 1988. Freely redistributable. (HTML markup by John English)
	The CD Recordable FAQ All about the different types of recordable CDs.    ¤  25 Jun 2001. Freely redistributable. Home site: http://www.cdrfaq.org/
	The DVD FAQ Information about Digital Versatile Disk technology.    ¤  22 Jun 2001. Freely redistributable. Home site: http://www.videodiscovery.com/vdyweb/dvd/dvdfaq.html

Other peripherals:

	The Video FAQ Frequently asked questions from the newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video.    ¤  11 Aug 1996. Reproduced under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Home site: http://www.heartlab.rri.uwo.ca/vidfaq/videofaq.html (now gone)
	An Introduction to Modems A nice introductory article from the University of Chicago.    ¤  20 Jun 1997. Reproduced by permission. Home site: http://www-ccs.uchicago.edu/technotes/misc/Modems.html
	A Basic Modem FAQ Which, despite its name, is actually quite detailed!    ¤  31 Mar 1998. Reproduced by permission. Home site: http://www.actrix.gen.nz/faq/modem.html
	An Ethernet Tutorial Written by Paul Spandler of the University of Brighton. It also deals with TCP/IP, the OSI 7-layer communications model and other related topics.    ¤  Jun 1998. Reproduced by permission. Home site: http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/pcinfo/hardware/ethernet/index.htm