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PC System Design Guide

Series of hardware design requirements and recommendations

The PC System Design Guide (also known as the PC-97, PC-98, PC-99, or PC 2001 specification) is a series of hardware design requirements and recommendations for IBM PC compatible personal computers, compiled by Microsoft and Intel Corporation during 1997–2001. They were aimed at helping manufacturers provide hardware that made the best use of the capabilities of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and to simplify setup and use of such computers.

Every part of a standard computer and the most common kinds of peripheral devices are defined with specific requirements. Systems and devices that meet the specification should be automatically recognized and configured by the operating system.

Versions

Four versions of the PC System Design Guide were released. In PC-97, a distinction was made between the requirements of a Basic PC, a Workstation PC and an Entertainment PC. In PC-98, the Mobile PC was added as a category. In PC 2001, the Entertainment PC was dropped.

Version	Date
PC-97	February 9, 1998
PC-98	December 31, 1998
PC-99	July 14, 1999
PC 2001	November 2, 2000

PC-97

Required:

120 MHz Pentium, MIPS R4x00, Digital Alpha 21064 (EV4) or IBM PowerPC architecture (latter three only under Windows NT)
16 MB RAM

Initial version.

Introduced color code for PS/2 keyboard (purple) and PS/2 mouse (green) connectors

PC-98

(Not to be confused with NEC's incompatible PC-98 series)

Aimed at systems to be used with Windows 98 or Windows 2000. Required:

200 MHz Pentium processor with MMX technology (or equivalent performance)
256 KB L2 cache
32 MB RAM (recommended: 64 MB of 66 MHz DRAM)
ACPI 1.0 (including power button behavior)
Fast BIOS power-up (limited RAM test, no floppy test, minimal startup display, etc.)
BIOS Y2K compliance
PXE preboot environment

It was published as .

PC-99

Required:

300 MHz CPU
64 MB RAM
USB
Comprehensive color-coding scheme for ports and connectors (see below) Strongly discouraged:
Non plug-and-play hardware
ISA slots

It was published as .

PC 2001

Required:

667 MHz CPU
64 MB RAM

Final version. First to require IO-APICs to be enabled on all desktop systems. Places a greatly increased emphasis on legacy-reduced and legacy-free systems. Some "legacy" items such as ISA expansion slots and device dependence on MS-DOS are forbidden entirely, while others are merely strongly discouraged.

PC 2001 removes compatibility for the A20 line: "If A20M# generation logic is still present in the system, this logic must be terminated such that software writes to I/O port 92, bit 1, do not result in A20M# being asserted to the processor."

Color-coding scheme for connectors and ports

Perhaps the most end-user visible and lasting impact of PC 99 was that it introduced a color code for the various standard types of plugs and connectors used on PCs. As many of the connectors look very similar, particularly to a novice PC user, this made it far easier for people to connect peripherals to the correct ports on a PC. This color code was gradually adopted by almost all PC and motherboard manufacturers. Some of the color codes have also been widely adopted by peripheral manufacturers.

Color / Pantone value	Function	Connector on PC	Mouse and keyboard		Green / 3395C		Purple / 2715C		Gold / 131C	General input/output		Black / 426C		Grey / 424C		Burgundy / 235C		Teal or turquoise / 322C	Video		Blue / 661C		White		Yellow / 123C		Yellow / 123C	Audio		Pink / 701C		Light blue / 284C		Lime green / 577C		Orange / 157C		Brown / 4645C
PS/2 mouse / pointing device	6-pin mini-DIN female
PS/2 keyboard
Game port / MIDI	15-pin D female
USB 1	USB Type A female
IEEE 1394 (FireWire)	6-pin FireWire 400
Parallel port	25-pin D female
Serial port	9-pin D male
Analog monitor	15-pin VGA female
Digital monitor	DVI female
Video out: S-Video	4-pin mini-DIN
Video out: Composite video	RCA jack
Analog microphone audio input (mono or stereo).	3.5 mm TRS
Analog line level audio input.
Analog line level audio output.
Analog audio output for the center speaker and Subwoofer
Analog audio output for "right-to-left" speakers.

References

Robert Bruce Thompson. (24 July 2003). "PC Hardware in a Nutshell". O'Reilly & Associates, Inc..
"PC 2001 System Design Guide". Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corporation..
[http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/pcguides.mspx PC 99 System Design Guide], Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corporation, 14 July 1999. Chapter 3: PC 99 basic requirements ([http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000pro/PCG/1.0/NT5/EN-US/pc99v1a.exe PC 99 System Design Guide (Self-extracting .exe archive)] {{Webarchive. link. (2007-02-16 . Requirement 3.18.3: Systems use a color-coding scheme for connectors and ports. Accessed 2009-02-05)

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

color-codes computer-standards ibm-pc-compatibles

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