Toshiba A60-S1691ST User Manual - Page 228

modem GLOSSARY keyboard: An input device containing switches that are activated by manually pressing marked keys. Each keystroke activates a switch that transmits a specific code to the computer. For each key, the transmitted code is, in turn, representative of the (ASCII) character marked on the key. kilobyte (KB): A unit of data storage equal to 1024 bytes. See also byte and megabit. L level 2 cache: See cache. Light Emitting Diode (LED): A semiconductor device that emits light when a current is applied. Liquid Crystal Display (LCD): Liquid crystal sealed between two sheets of glass coated with transparent conducting material. The viewing-side coating is etched into character forming segments with leads that extend to the edge of the glass. Applying a voltage between the glass sheets darkens the liquid crystal to provide contrast to lighted portions of the display. LSI: Large Scale Integration. 1) A technology that allows the inclusion of up to 100,000 simple logic gates on a single chip. 2) An integrated circuit that uses the large scale integration. M main board: See motherboard. MDA: Monochrome Display Adapter. A video display protocol defined by the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter and its associated circuitry for direct drive TTL displays that supports a monochrome 720x350 text mode. megabyte (MB): A unit of data storage equal to 1024 kilobytes. See also kilobyte. megahertz: A unit of wave frequency that equals 1 million cycles per second. See also hertz. menu: A software interface that displays a list of options on the screen. Also called a screen. microprocessor: A hardware component contained in a single integrated circuit that carries out instructions. Also called the central processing unit (CPU), one of the main parts of the computer. MMX: Refers to microprocessors with additional instructions beyond the x86 standard. The instructions were developed on the basis of multimedia code requirements and thus improve the performance of multimedia applications. mode: A method of operation, for example, the boot mode or the resume mode. modem: Derived from modulator/ demodulator, a device that converts (modulates) digital data for transmission over telephone lines and then converts modulated data (demodulates) to digital format where received. Glossary-9