The invention of the transistor, or semiconductor, was one of the most important developments leading to the personal computer revolution. What company invented the transistor in 1947?

Reduced Instruction Set Computer - a type of microprocessor that relies on simple instructions which can be used to build more complicated ones.

IBM also created it's own version of DOS called PC-DOS.nn

Spiders are also referred to as "bots" or "crawlers," and constantly scan the Internet for new and updated Web sites.

An Extended Capabilities Port is about 10 times faster than the old standard one, but it is used the same way a regular parallel port is.

The Intel 8080 was a jazzed-up calculator chip. It was included in microcomputer kits which were little more than demonstration tools and did little except blink lights. Besides the 8080 chip, the Altair included a power supply, a front panel with a large number of lights and 256 bytes (not kilobytes) of memory. The kit sold for {$395} and had to be assembled.

Before IBM created its personal computer, two types of computer systems, Apple II and CP-M, dominated the microcomputer world. Neither of these systems were PC compatible, or Mac-compatible (the two primary standards in place today). The original IBM PC became a new standard in the microcomputer industry. Since then, hundreds of millions of PC-compatible systems have been sold, as the original PC grew into a large family of computers and peripherals. More software has been written for this computer family than for any other system on the market.