Cool-Lux A100 manual Modem, Glossary-9

modem

keyboard: An input device contain- ing switches that are activated by man- ually pressing marked keys. Each keystroke activates a switch that trans- mits 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): Liq- uid crystal sealed between two sheets of glass coated with transparent con- ducting material. The viewing-side coating is etched into character form- ing segments with leads that extend to the edge of the glass. Applying a volt- age 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 stor- age 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 dis- plays a list of options on the screen. Also called a screen.

microprocessor: A hardware compo- nent 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 devel- oped on the basis of multimedia code requirements and thus improve the performance of multimedia applica- tions.

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 transmis- sion over telephone lines and then con- verts modulated data (demodulates) to digital format where received.

Glossary-9