if i talk to you about minicomputers… what would you say I’m referring to? Have they launched smaller computers and you had not heard? Do you live in a world where there are computers you don’t know about?
Let me tell you that the minicomputer is older than you and me surely. So many that, in fact, no one uses this term anymore and whoever does it is either a computer specialist or does it incorrectly to refer to a tiny computer.
Has it made you curious? do you really want to know what are minicomputers? We are going to tell you by specifying what are they used for andof course, What differences do they present with respect to other computer equipment?.
What are Minicomputers in computing? Definition
a minicomputerdespite the fact that its name may mislead us, it is a computer equipment that is larger than our computers. That’s because the term was coined when computers were huge, and therefore this new piece of equipment was tiny by comparison.
Regarding its characteristics, the first thing we have to indicate is that we are talking about a multi-user system equipment. That is, it is a type of server capable of supporting other equipment, which act as a client in what would be a client-server model. In turn, it should be mentioned that Of the multi-user teams, this is the smallest (until the development of microcomputers has allowed these to also be used as servers if desired).
They arise from the availability of use of integrated circuitswhich allowed the creation of smaller systems than what had been seen up to now (the 70s), and the development of a better design of RAM memorieswhich allowed us to have more quantity and variety of resources.
Of course, we must also give part of the credit to the operating systems with support for multitasking and with functions for servers which, after all, are the ones that made the machines work in the way in which the user was demanding. They were remarkably successful in the 1980s, when terminals and mainframes were replaced by a system of interconnected personal computers, all of them connected to the same device, the minicomputer.
What are Mini Computers for and what are their uses?
The essence of this device is the same as that of a , a system that allows the management of information given in thousands to perform calculations and to store content. Thus, we can say that its use is the same. What changes, in addition to the size of the device and its components, is the target audience.
The power of the minicomputers, despite being also a server, is less, so that it will be used for smaller tasks, where the computing power should not be so high or a completely specialized machine is not necessary.
It is for general use and, at the same time, more economical and usable by a greater number of users. Works the data very well, quickly and correctly one hundred percent and supports a significant number of connected teams (customers), storing the information related to these and the one that they themselves include in the system of their own free will.
What are the differences between a minicomputer and a microcomputer?
Although their names can mislead us, the truth is that these teams are totally different in terms of their essence, or at least they were when they were launched on the market.
On one hand, we have the minicomputer which, as we have seen, does not cease to be one server to support multiple users that are connected to it and that it has smaller size and capacity than a mainframe.
for its part, is that computing machine that has a microprocessor. At the time of its appearance, minicomputers did not have microprocessorsso that, in this aspect, they were totally different and it is the prefix micro- that makes the difference.
It must also be said, of course, that microcomputers were focused on single user use. Now everything has changedsince we have that both a minicomputer incorporates microprocessors and that a microcomputer is capable of acting as a user, so that the two points that differentiate them are inverted without a problem, complicating being able to differentiate the concepts.
So much so that any good desktop can work as a server without any problem, being both micro and minicomputer and getting both concepts completely outdated.
In other words, currently no one talks about mini or microcomputersand, if we do, we relate the concepts, erroneously, with mini computers, type netbooks or similar. But, now yes, you know what both concepts consist of and how they differ.
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