Abstract         An abstract class is a base class in a hierarchy that cannot
                 be made an instance of due to a virtual function as a member.

AC-3             Dolby Digital Surround Sound system.

ACPI             Advanced Configuration Power Interface.
							 
ActiveX          Microsoft language to provide dynamic HTML content.

ADA              A programming language developed by the DoD to replace its
                 450 programming languages used in embedded systems. Ada is
                 name after Ada Lovelace, the very first programmer.

ADF              Amiga Disk Format. Image of an Amiga floppy disk. Used for 
                 emulators such as Fellow, DOSUAE and Winuae.

ADSL             Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. High speed network 
                 over dedicated digital lines. Average speeds at 8Mbps
                 downstream and 768Kbps upstream. See ADSL Guide Web site.

Adware           Programs or popups used to advertise products or collect 
                 private information on browser use for use by advertisers
                 See Spyware.

AGA              Advaced Graphics Architechure used on Amiga 1200 and 4000 models.

Agnus            Chip used in Amigas for Chip memory management and Blitter.

AHCI             Advanced Host Controller Interface. Used by SATA drives to provide
                 higher speeds, hot swapping and native command queuing which is
                 not offered in IDE modes. Turning it off or switching to IDE
                 emulation will allow earlier versions of Windows to be installed.
                 
ALGOL            ALGOrithmic Language used mainly for Scientific computations, not
                 widely used as COBOL or Fortran. See ALGOL.
								 
AGP              Advanced or Accelerated Graphics Port. Very fast expansion 
                 port for graphics card in PCs and new Power Macs.

Air              Adobe Air is a plugin to develop rich web applications.

Alice            Chip in 1200 or 4000 for AGA for 2MB Chip ram. Replaces Agnus.

Alpha            Software in early stages of development with many features not
                 available and bugs not removed yet. Probably unstable as well.
                 
AMD              Advanced Micro Devices. Manufacturer of x86 compatible processors 
                 such as the K6-2, K6-3 and Athlon chips.

AMD64            AMD's 64 bit expansion of their x86 processors to add 64 bit capability.

Amiga            Range of 16/32 bit computers produced by Commodore in mid 1980s.
                 More information here.

AMR              Audio, Modem Riser. New slot for software based modems and audio
                 cards. Usually looks like a very short brown slot near PCI slots.
                 								 
ANSI             American National Standards Institute. See website.

AOL              America On Line. Propietary Internet provider using their
                 own software to provide a `portal` to the internet.

Apache           Open Source Web Server used widely on Unix Systems. The TomCat
                 version includes Java scripting.

API              Application Programmer's Interface. The frontend of programs
                 and functions need to write applications for a given system.
                 DirectX is the API for games and multimedia applications.
								 								 
APM              Advanced Power Management. Software control over power saving
                 features of the PC.
								 
Arc              An older compression method. Superceeded by ZIP and LHA.


ARP              Address Resolution Protocol. Converts Ethernet MAC addresses
                 to IP addresses. Allows Broadcasting on LANs.


ASCII            American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Code for
                 displaying letters, numbers and symbols on computers.

ASIO             Audio System Input/Output. Provides direct access to audio
                 hardware to reduce latency.

ASP              Active Server Pages. Dynamic programming language for HTML
                 which can be written in Visual Studio or the older Visual Interdev.

ASP              Application Service Provider. Rather like an ISP but provides
                 application software for business over a network or internet.
                 
ASR              Automatic System Recovery. Feature of Windows Me/2001 which 
                 will protect system files from being overwritten by invalid or
                 older system files.
                  								 
Assembler        Program to produce machine code from Assembly language programs.

Assembly         Assembly language. Programmers use a symbolic language to produce
                 one-to-one instructions as the machine code equivalent. Used for
                 speed and low-level functions.

AT               Advanced Technology. For 80x86 based processors or higher.

ATAPI            AT Attachment Packet Interface. Standard used for IDE devices 
                 such as CD ROM drives. (ATA)

Athlon           High speed processor by AMD. Compatible with Intel's x86 processors.

Athlon64         AMD's new 64 bit processor to replace older 32 bit processors. Similar
                 to Intel's Itanium but retains some 32 bit compatibility.

ATX              A standard motherboard (and case) size with Power Management.

AWARD            Name of a common BIOS chip manufacturer. (Now part of Phoenix).