PC99

11/29/98

PC99: "PC99" is officially designated as Microsoft's 1999-2000 Windows Logo program. It is the minimum standard that a PC must meet in order to display a "Designed for Microsoft Windows" sticker.

The specification recognizes a number of categories of PC with somewhat different characteristics -- servers, workstations, office, consumer, entertainment, and mobile PCs: [I think these categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, 'Office' seems to overlap 'workstations' and 'servers' ... sort of.]

Performance equivalent to a 300MHz, Celeron with 128K L2 cache (it is unclear whether they are talking about the 300A Celeron or a 300 with a motherboard cache). Workstations equivalent to 400MHz with 256K L2. Mobile PCs equivalent to a 233MHz processor with 128K L2.
32MB of memory for consumer and mobile machines. 64MB for office machines. 128MB for WorkStations.
BIOS support for ACPI, USB keyboards, and USB Hubs
Two USB ports (only one for Portable PCs)
No ISA slots [you may regard "Designed to run Windows" as a warning if you have ISA cards you wish to use]
DVD required in entertainment PCs and recommended for office/consumer PCs with "optical media devices". [No clue what this means. The PC needs glasses?]
56K V.90 modem on Consumer and Entertainment PCs Also, V.250AT, V.80 and V.253(for voice modems) compliant.
Win modems acceptable but must be WDM-based.
NDIS 5.0 miniport Network adapter required on Office PCs and recommended for consumer and entertainment PCs.
AGP video is recommended
Monitor DDCS V3L2 compliant.
MSDOS audio capability is not required
An Entertainment PC should "offer more capability" than a Consumer PC [No, I am not making this up].
Docking, and video requirements for mobile PCs clarified.
Details of video compliance are clarified/specified.
Formal Specification compliances required for USB, IEEE1394, PC Card, Cardbus, IR, and PCI are identified.
Requirements for ISDN voice handling, home networking, IT, Cable modem and ADSL devices if present.
Daisy chained parallel port devices to support PNP and IEEE1284.3 pass thru requirements.
USB bandwidth requirements imposed.

There are many other requirements and recommendations. The full specification (about a megabyte) is available in several formats on the Intel and Microsoft web sites