Cabin S Series.book Disk Drive, Diskette, Driver, Extended Memory, Floppy Disk, Hard drive

L i f e B o o k S S e r i e s – S e c t i o n E i g h t

Disk

A spinning platter of magnetic data storage media. If the platter is very stiff it is a hard drive, if it is highly flexible it is a floppy disk, if it is a floppy disk in a hard housing with a shutter it is commonly called a diskette.

Disk Drive

The hardware which spins the disk and has the heads and control circuitry for reading and writing the data on the disk.

Diskette

A floppy disk in a hard housing with a shutter.

DMA

Direct Memory Access. Special circuitry for memory to memory transfers of data which do not require CPU action.

DMI

Desktop Management Interface. A standard that provides PC management applications with a common method of locally or remotely querying and configuring PC computer systems, hardware and software compo- nents, and peripherals.

DOS

Disk Operating System (MS-DOS is a Microsoft Disk Operating System).

Driver

A computer program which converts application and operating system commands to external devices into the exact form required by a specific brand and model of device in order to produce the desired results from that particular equipment.

ECP

Extended Capability Port. A set of standards for high speed data communication and interconnection between electronic devices.

ESD

Electro-Static Discharge. The sudden discharge of elec- tricity from a static charge which has built-up slowly. Example: the shock you get from a doorknob on a dry day or the sparks you get from brushing hair on a dry day.

Extended Memory

All memory more than the 640KB recognized by MS-DOS as system memory.

FCC

Federal Communication Commission.

Floppy Disk

A spinning platter of magnetic data storage media which is highly flexible.

GB

Gigabyte.

Hard drive

A spinning platter of magnetic data storage media where the platter is very stiff.

Hexadecimal

A decimal notation for the value of a 4 bit binary number. (0-9, A, B, C, D, E, F) Example: 2F in hexa- decimal = 00101111 in binary = 47 in decimal.

I/O

Input/Output. Data entering and leaving your notebook in electronic form.

I/O Port

The connector and associated control circuits for data entering and leaving your notebook in electronic form.

IDE

Intelligent Drive Electronics. A type of control interface for a hard drive which is inside the hard drive unit.

Infrared

Light just beyond the red portion of the visible light spectrum which is invisible to humans.

IR

An abbreviation for infrared.

IrDA

Infrared Data Association. An organization which produces standards for communication using infrared as the carrier.

IRQ

Interrupt Request. An acronym for the hardware signal to the CPU that an external event has occurred which needs to be processed.

KB

Kilobyte.

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