Bus

The internal pathways (data bus, address bus, and control bus) of wires connecting various parts of a computer. Common standards for buses were Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) 16-bit bus common in AT-compatible PCs, Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) 32-bit buses in IBM PS/2 computers, and Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) 32-bit buses that are backward compatible with ISA adapters. An "expansion bus" is an extension of the data bus and address bus that includes slots for adapter boards. It is better than ISA and EISA for hypermedia authoring to also purchase a "local bus" system in 32-bit or higher capacity with eight or more expansion slots for multimedia options. A local bus connects the CPU with peripherals directly so as to improve performance speed. However, in recent years, the VL local buses are not as good as the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) brainchild of Intel. The term "bus" can also apply to standards for connecting electronic components other than computer components. The term CDBus or consumer electronics bus refers to a home or office automation standard such that components connected through power lines, coaxial cable, infrared connections, and telephone lines will be mutually compatible. (See also VL-Bus and Cache)

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is the common bus used on PCs.  It is a relatively slow hardware bus an is a small fraction of the speed of FireWire.  The term "FireWire" is the early name given to High Performance Serial Bus.A serial bus developed by Apple Computer and Texas Instruments (IEEE 1394).The High Performance Serial Bus can connect up to 63 devices in a tree-like daisy chain configuration, and transmit data at up to 400 megabits per second.It supports plug and play and peer-to-peer communication between peripheral devices.Wintel (Intel and Microsoft) were spooked by the speed of FireWire and developed new PCs called Easy PCs that use only USB and FireWire in machines that will no longer have the familiar parallel and serial ports.