A+ hardware question - CPU lingo

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i am studying for the hardware exam. i got D. Groth's (Sybex) book, and i am confused about something. the book talks about the "external bus" and "data bus" as being two different things. as far as i know, they are the same. the "external" bus is the "data bus". if they are different, please tell me how?

the book does not talk about the 586 and 686 cpu-s. what are they?

i know pentiums have all 64 bits data bus (again that term!), and 32 bits address bus.
what is meant by "64 bits architecture"?

how is the Motorola PowerPC G5 (Macintosh) (which is a 64 bits) different from a pentium 4? that pentium is "32 bits architecture". what does that mean?

detailed answers highly appreciated.

cheers,

 

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Greetings, mueller. Welcome to CF. I don't know if I can answer all those questions off the top of my head but a quick trip to webopedia produced the following links:

external data bus

internal data bus

586 and 686 CPUs are Pentium class CPUs. Here's a link that might help. Scroll down to see the full list of CPUs starting with the 8088.

Hardware Components: CPUs

BTW, Google is your friend. If you can't find something in the Sybex book, you can usually find supplementary into online. You can still come here with your really tough questions, but you also don't have to depend on just one source.

That should get you started. If you haven't done so already, take a moment and go up to the new members introduction forum and tell us a bit about yourself. Cheers.

 

thank you. webopedia, what a marvel....
cheers,

 

Hey Mueller - why not stop by the New Members Forum, and drop a quick post about yourself. It always makes it easier to help Members when they introduce themselves first