lcd monitors

Liquid crystal display technology works by blocking light. Specifically, an LCD is made of two pieces of polarized glass (also called substrate) that contain a liquid crystal material between them. A backlight creates light that passes through the first substrate. At the same time, electrical currents cause the liquid crystal molecules to align to allow varying levels of light to pass through to the second substrate and create the colors and images that you see.

PPPoe

oint to Point Protocol over Ethernet is a proposal specifying how a host personal computer (PC) interacts with a broadband modem (i.e. xDSL, cable, wireless, etc) to achieve access to the growing number of High speed data networks. Relying on two widely accepted standards, Ethernet and the point-to-point protocol (PPP), the PPPoE implementation requires virtually no more knowledge on the part of the end user other than that required for standard Dial up Internet access. In addition, PPPoE requires no major changes in the operational model for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and carriers. The significance of PPP over Ethernet has to do with its far greater ease of use versus competing approaches. By making high speed access easier to use for end consumers, and more seamless to integrate into the existing infrastructure for carriers and ISPs, PPPoE could speed the widespread adoption of High speed access services

Also, PPP over Ethernet provides a major advantage for service providers by maximizing integration with - and minimizing disruption of - service providers' existing dial network infrastructures. Through tight integration with existing back office automation tools that ISPs have developed for dial customers, PPPoE enables rapid service deployment and cost savings. From authentication, accounting and secure access to configuration management, PPPoE supports a broad range of existing applications and services.

Point to point protocol

Today, no one uses dumb terminals or terminal emulators to connect to an individual computer. Instead, we use our modems to connect to an Internet service provider (ISP), and the ISP connects us into the Internet. The Internet lets us connect to any machine in the world (see How Web Servers and the Internet Work for details). Because of the relationship between your computer, the ISP and the Internet, it is no longer appropriate to send individual characters. Instead, your modem is routing TCP/IP packets between you and your ISP.

The standard technique for routing these packets through your modem is called the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). The basic idea is simple -- your computer's TCP/IP stack forms its TCP/IP datagrams normally, but then the datagrams are handed to the modem for transmission. The ISP receives each datagram and routes it appropriately onto the Internet. The same process occurs to get data from the ISP to your computer. See this page for additional information on PPP.

If you want to know more about modems, protocols, and especially if you wish to delve into things like PSK and QAM in more detail, check out the links on the next page!

agp graphic card

AGP improves the process of storing texture maps by allowing the operating system to designate RAM for use by the graphics card on the fly. This type of memory is called AGP memory or non-local video memory. Using the much more abundant and faster RAM used by the operating system to store texture maps reduces the number of maps that have to be stored on the graphics card's memory. In addition, the size of the texture map your computer is capable of processing is no longer limited to the amount of RAM on the graphics card.

The other way AGP saves RAM is by only storing texture maps once. It does this with a little trickery. This trickery takes the form of a chipset called the Graphics Address Remapping Table (GART). GART takes the portion of the system memory that the AGP borrows to store texture maps for the graphics card and re-addresses it. The new address provided by GART makes the CPU think that the texture map is being stored in the card's framebuffer. GART may be putting bits and pieces of the map all over the system RAM; but when the CPU needs it, as far as it's concerned the texture map is right where it should be.

Photo courtesy Intel Corporation
Diagram of the standard architecture of a Pentium III-based system using AGP

PCi slot

changing your motherboard - ViDeO

a bit about bits and bytes

f you have used a computer for more than five minutes, then you have heard the words bits and bytes. Both RAM and hard disk capacities are measured in bytes, as are file sizes when you examine them in a file viewer.

You might hear an advertisement that says, "This computer has a 32-bit Pentium processor with 64 megabytes of RAM and 2.1 gigabytes of hard disk space." And many HowStuffWorks articles talk about bytes (for example, How CDs Work). In this article, we will discuss bits and bytes so that you have a complete understanding.