PC Doctor On Call - Home - Computer Repairs & Upgrades, Northern Ireland

IBM - International Business Machines. A manufacturer and retailer of computers.

IE - See also Internet Explorer.

Infinite loop - A loop in a program should have a terminating condition. If this condition is never met, then iterations of the loop will continue forever. This is a programming error or bug. See also Program and Bug.

Ink Jet Printer - A printer that squirts jets of ink onto the passing paper. The ink dries quickly and forms a glossy ink texture. Colour ink jet printers are available at a higher cost because they have multiple jets for different colours.

Integer - A data type that can represent whole numbers, i.e. it cannot hold a fractional part, for example 42. As a 16bit number, it can have a range 0 to 65535, or -32768 to +32767 if the most significant bit represents the sign. See also Data Types and Long.

Intel - A manufacturer of electronic components of processor chips for sold under their Pentium and Celeron range of processors and for motherboards. See also Processor, Pentium, Celeron and Motherboard.

Internet - Originally designed in 1969 and intended for the sharing of academic information and for large Corporates, the standard was soon expanded to other fields. Popular in recent years for all members of society to find information of choice and for sending and receiving e-mail, it gained the title information super highway. It is essentially a network of networks in a spiders web pattern, and is so became nick named the world wide web or just the web for short. Information can be viewed on these computers by using a software program called a browser. See also Network, Browser, Web Page and e-mail.

Interpreter - A program that can interpret the code of a program not written in the native machine code of the computer. Due to the fact that it has to perform a translation, the run time of the foreign code can take longer than if the code was compiled into native machine code. Examples of languages that produce generic code that are computer independent are:- Pascal, BASIC etc. See also Program, Compiler, Pascal and BASIC.

Intranet - Similar in design to the Internet, large Corporates can have an internal Internet that can only be viewed from inside the company using a browser. This allows the set-up of departmental information sharing and can work well if a suitable structure is defined first, which is unlike the randomness of the external Internet. See also Network, Browser and Internet.

IP - See also TCP/IP.

IP Address - A unique 32 bit numerical address of a referencing a computer on a TCP/IP network. Commonly found on the Internet. The usual way of referencing these addresses are aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd where each number is in the range 0-255. Web-site URL's are parsed from www.domain.com to 200.201.202.203 by using a DNS Server. See also TCP/IP, Network, Internet, Web-Site, URL, Domain and DNS Server.

IPX/SPX - Internet packet exchange/sequenced packet exchange. IPX is a network layer protocol that routes packets from one network location to another. SPX is a transport layer protocol. IPX/SPX is used by NetWare networks to conform with the OSI standards. See also Network, Protocol, Netware and OSI.

IRQ - Interrupt Request. A method that a device attached to a computer can use to momentarily interrupt the computer to request that it needs attention in some way. The operating system then calls the device driver program that will then service this request in whatever way it has been programmed to. See also Operating System, Device and Device Driver.

ISA - Industry Standard Architecture. An old 8Mhz 16bit interface standard that was once popular inside computers that allow expansion cards to be fitted that have an edge connector that fits inside, on the motherboards ISA slots. PCI is the successor to ISA/EISA and Micro channel. See also Interface, Motherboard, AGP, PCI, EISA and Micro channel.

ISDN - Integrated services digital network. It can work using copper phone lines enabling the transmission of digital data with no need to convert the data to analogue with a modem. ISDN is costly but is by far, more reliable than a normal phone line and allows much more data to be transmitted in the same time frame. See also Data and Modem.

ISP - Internet Service Provider. The company that provides connectivity and POP e-mail services to the Internet for individuals. See also Internet, POP and e-mail.

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