Glossary 3
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 bits per second.
Abbreviation for British thermal unit.
An information pathway between the
components of a computer. Your comput-
er contains an expansion bus that allows
the processor to communicate with con-
trollers for all the various peripheral
devices connected to the computer. Your
computer also contains an address bus
and a data bus for communications be-
tween 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 re-
trieval. For example, your computer’s
BIOS may cache ROM code in f aste r
RAM. Or, a disk-cache utility may reserve
RAM in w hich to s tore frequen tly access-
ed information from your computer’s disk
driv es; when a program ma kes 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 th e disk drive.
The metal -contact secti on on the bottom
of an expansion card that plugs into an
expansion-card connector.
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 centimeter(s).
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 in terru pt fo r COM1 an d COM3 is
IRQ4, and the default interrupt for COM2
and COM4 is IRQ3. There fore, yo u must
be careful when configuring software that
runs a se r ia l device so tha t y ou don’t cre-
ate an interrupt co nfli ct.
As they relate to DMI, manageable
components are operati ng sy ste ms ,
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
command s in th e autoexec.bat file). This
start-up file contains commands that
specify which devices to install and which
drivers to use. Th is file also contains com-
mands that determine how the operating
system uses memory and controls fi les.
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.