This page will contain some facts about computers in general. While I have tried to verify the data I can't be held responsible for any data that's incorrect. If you find something that's wrong PLEASE post it in the forums.

Video Standards
Year released Video standard
August 12, 1981 MDA
1981 CGA
1985 EGA
1987 MCGA
1987 VGA
1987 8514/A
1990 VESA SVGA Standard
1990 XGA

 

Color depth
Colors bits
2 1
16 4
256 8
32768 15
65536 16
16,7Mio 24

 

Bus types
Bus name Full name Year introduced Bus width Fist pc to use bus Bus speed Misc information
S-100 Standard-100 ~1975 8-bit Altair 8800 ?

Was first designed for the Altair because making a single board computer would produce a mainboard that was to large. Also at the time several parts were not ready so the S-100 bus(as it later would be called) Allowed these parts to be added later. The bus had several problems, the worst being power pins were next to each other making it possible to short out the bus. Based on the intel 8080.

The 100 in the name means the bus has 100 pins.
Apple II bus Apple II bus ? 8-bit Apple II 1 Mhz First used in the apple II it was the bus used in all apple systems until the macintosh was introduced. The apple IIgs has the honor of being the las computer manufactured by apple to use this bus. Unlike nearly every other bus apple never gave this bus a name.
NuBus NuBus ~1980 (first used in 1987) 32-bit Apple Macintosh II 10Mhz-20MHz Was designed for the MIT NuMachine. Although the computer itself Never saw production it's bus lived on in several systems. Unlike nearly every bus of it's day it was a truly system independent bus. At that time nearly every bus was basically a direct connection to the processor. This meant the cards and bus would only work with the family of processors it was originally designed for. The NuBus was mainly used on the apple macintosh and the NeXT Computers.
ISA Industry Standard Architecture August 12 1981 8-bit IBM PC ? The first bus used in pc compatible systems. Designed by ibm.
16-bit ISA Industry Standard Architecture 1984 8-16-bit IBM AT 8Mhz Designed to accommodate the faster 80286 processor. Fully backwards compatible with the 8-bit isa bus. This is one of the oldest buses still in use today (although it's clearly about dead being restricted mainly to terminals and single board computers).
MCA Micro Channel Architecture April 1987 16-32-bit IBM PS/2 10Mhz Designed by IBM directly because of clone makers taking over the ISA bus. IBM locked down this bus so only they could use it. Even designing a card for the MCA bus required buying rights to do so. IBM did sell the rights to use the MCA bus to a few pc makers (tandy is one).
EISA Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture ? 32-bit ? ? Initially designed by compaq it was later adopted by several manufactures. Although EISA never was popular outside of 486 and early pentium based servers.
VLB VESA(Video Electronics Standards Association) Local Bus 1992 32-bit ? 33Mhz (but higher on some systems) This was the first but to gain popularity since the ISA bus was introduced over 5 years ago. Due to it's design it was restricted to 486 based systems. It may have been used on a few pentium based system but most of them went for a isa/pci bus system.
PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect 1993 32-bit ? 33Mhz The first bus not compatible with the isa bus that really became popular. Designed by intel it's no surprise it became so popular. PCI eventually overtook the isa bus to the point that today you almost can't find a board with an isa bus.
AGP Accelerated Graphics Port   32-bit ? 66Mhz Based on the pci 2.1 specification that was never implemented on the pc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(still working on this. lots more to add)

Processors
Year released
Processor type
Internal bus
external bus
Memory bus
maximum memory
Number of transistors
 Manufacturing technology
November, 1971
Intel 4004
4-bit
8-bit
12-bit
4k
 2,300 10 micron
April 1972
Intel 8008
8-bit
8-bit
14-bit
16k
 3,500 10 micron
April 1974
Intel 8080
16-bit
8-bit
16-bit
64k
 6,000 6 micron
1974
Intel 4040
4-bit
?
12-bit
8k
 3,000 10 micron
1976
Intel 8085
16-bit
8-bit
16-bit
64k
 6,500 3 micron
July 1976
Zilog Z80
16-bit
8-bit
16-bit
?
 ? ?
1976
6502
8-bit
?
16-bit
?
 ? ?
June 8, 1978
8086
16-bit
16-bit
?
1024k
 29,000 3 micron
June 1, 1979
8088
16-bit
8-bit
?
1024k
 29,000 3 micron
1979
Motorola 68000
32-bit
16-bit
24-bit
?
 68,000 ?
1981
Intel 80186/80188
16-bit
8-bit
?
?
 ? ?
February 1, 1982
Intel 80286
16-bit
16-bit
?
16MB
 134,000 1.5 micron
October 17, 1985
Intel 80386DX
32-bit
32-bit
?
4GB
 275,000 1.5 micron
June 16, 1988
Intel 80386SX
32-bit
16-bit
?
16MB
 275,000 1.5 micron
April 10, 1989
Intel 80486DX
32-bit
32-bit
?
4GB
 1,200,000 1 micron
April 22, 1991
Intel 80486SX
32-bit
32-bit
?
4GB
 1,185,000 1 micron
March 22, 1993
Intel Pentium (60/66Mhz)
32-bit
64-bit
?
4GB
 3.1 million .8 micron
October 10, 1994
Intel Pentium (75Mhz)
32-bit
64-bit
?
?
 3.2 million .6 micron
November 1, 1995
Intel Pentium Pro
32-bit
64-bit
?
?
 5.5 million .6 micron
January 8, 1997
Intel Pentium MMX
32-bit
64-bit
?
?
 4.5 million .35 micron
May 7, 1997
Intel Pentium II
32-bit
64-bit
?
?
 7.5 million .35 micron
Nov 20, 2000
Intel Pentium IV
32-bit
64-bit
?
?
?
.18 micron
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
64-bit
?
?
?
?
?

 

http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/index.html