Dell Precision 610 Dell Precision WorkStation 610 Mini Tower Systems User's Gu - Page 205

A diskette that can boot your computer to the operating system in the event that the computer will not boot from the hard-disk drive. Abbreviation for bits per inch. Abbreviation for compact disc read-only memory. CD-ROM drives use optical technology to read data from CDs. CDs are read-only storage devices; you cannot write new data to a CD with standard CD-ROM drives. Abbreviation for bits per second. Abbreviation for centimeter(s). Abbreviation for British thermal unit. An information pathway between the components of a computer. Your computer contains an expansion bus that allows the processor to communicate with controllers for all the various peripheral devices connected to the computer. Your computer also contains an address bus and a data bus for communications between the processor and RAM. Eight contiguous bits of information, the basic data unit used by your computer. Abbreviation for Celsius. A fast storage area that keeps a copy of data or instructions for quicker data retrieval. For example, your computer's BIOS may cache ROM code in faster RAM. Or, a disk-cache utility may reserve RAM in which to store frequently accessed information from your computer's disk drives; when a program makes a request to a disk drive for data that is in the cache, the disk-cache utility can retrieve the data from RAM faster than from the disk drive. The metal-contact section on the bottom of an expansion card that plugs into an expansion-card connector. Acronym for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor. In computers, CMOS memory chips are often used for NVRAM storage. The device names for the first through fourth serial ports on your computer are COM1, COM2, COM3, and COM4. The default interrupt for COM1 and COM3 is IRQ4, and the default interrupt for COM2 and COM4 is IRQ3. Therefore, you must be careful when configuring software that runs a serial device so that you don't create an interrupt conflict. As they relate to DMI, manageable components are operating systems, computer systems, expansion cards, or peripherals that are compatible with DMI. Each component is made up of groups and attributes that are defined as relevant to that component. The config.sys file (Windows 95 and MS-DOS only) is executed when you boot your computer (before running any commands in the autoexec.bat file). This start-up file contains commands that specify which devices to install and which drivers to use. This file also contains commands that determine how the operating system uses memory and controls files. A chip that controls the transfer of data between the processor and memory or between the processor and a peripheral device such as a disk drive or the keyboard. Glossary 3