Use the drop down box for comprehensive information on common computer related acronyms / abbreviations. 

Select Abbreviation / Acronym

Select Abbreviation / Acronym ADSL APM ARP ASCII ASP ASPI ATA ATAPI ATM BBS BIOS BMP BOOTP bps CAB CAD CCIE CCNA CCNP CERT CGI CHM CMOS DARPA DIMM DIVX DLL DMA DRAM DSP DVI EEPROM EGA EIDE EISA EPP EPROM

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is the most common format for text files in computers and on the Internet. In an ASCII file, each alphabetic, numeric, or special character is represented with a 7-bit binary number (a string of seven 0s or 1s). 128 possible characters are defined.

Unix and DOS-based operating systems use ASCII for text files. Windows NT and 2000 uses a newer code, Unicode. IBM's S/390 systems use a proprietary 8-bit code called EBCDIC. Conversion programs allow different operating systems to change a file from one code to another.

ASCII was developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).