Dell A03, R610 owner manual 169, Amperes AC Alternating current, Glossary

Glossary

A — Ampere(s).

AC — Alternating current.

ACPI — Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. A standard interface for enabling the operating system to direct configuration and power management.

ambient temperature — The temperature of the area or room where the system is located.

ANSI — American National Standards Institute. The primary organization for developing technology standards in the U.S.

asset tag — An individual code assigned to a system, usually by an administrator, for security or tracking purposes.

backup — A copy of a program or data file. As a precaution, back up your system’s hard drive(s) on a regular basis.

blade — A module that contains a processor, memory, and a hard drive. The modules are mounted into a chassis that includes power supplies and fans.

bootable media — A diskette, or USB memory key, or optical media that is used to start your system in lieu of the hard drives.

BTU — British thermal unit.

bus — An information pathway between the components of a system. Your system contains an expansion bus that allows the processor to communicate with controllers for the peripheral devices connected to the system. Your system also contains an address bus and a data bus for communications between the processor and RAM.

C — Celsius.

cache — A fast storage area that keeps a copy of data or instructions for quick data retrieval.

cm — Centimeter(s).

COMn — The device names for the serial ports on your system. Serial ports can be either physical or virtual.

control panel — The part of the system that contains indicators and controls, such as the power button and power indicator.

controller — A chip or expansion card that controls the transfer of data between the processor and memory or between the processor and a peripheral device.

coprocessor — A chip that relieves the system’s processor of specific processing tasks. A math coprocessor, for example, handles numeric processing.

Glossary

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