AC drives are somewhat different in terms of a number of factors, which include electrical ratings, operating parameters, configurations, and features.  Electrical ratings include maximum output voltage, rated power, continuous output current, peak output current, AC supply voltage, and DC supply voltage.  AC drives use either single-phase or three-phase inputs at 50, 60, or 400 Hz.  Operating parameters include specifications regarding setup and control.  Some AC drives have manual controls such as knobs, DIP switches, jumpers or potentiometers. Others include joystick, digital control panel, computer interface, or slots for PCMCIA cards.  Control programs can be stored on removable, nonvolatile storage media.  Hand held devices were designed to be programmed remotely. However, wireless and web-enabled controls are also available.  Configurations for AC drives include several mounting styles.  Features for AC drives include soft starting; dynamic, injection, or regenerative braking; brake outputs or auxiliary inputs/outputs (I/O); auto-tuning, self-diagnostics, and status monitoring; and alarms for conditions such as over voltage. 

Computer-based AC drives utilize various kinds of buses and communication standards.  Bus types include advanced technology attachment (ATA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), integrated drive electronics (IDE), industry standard architecture (ISA), general-purpose interface bus (GPIB), universal serial bus (USB), and VersaModule Eurocard bus (VMEbus).  Communications standards include ARCNET, AS-i, Beckhoff I/O, CANbus, CANopen, DeviceNet, Ethernet, small computer systems interface (SCSI), and smart distributed system (SDS).  A lot of serial and parallel interfaces are also available.