14 Dell Precisi on 610 Mini Tower Systems Us er’s Guide
As the main circuit board, the system
boar d usua lly c ont ains most of your c om-
puter’s i ntegral comp onents, such a s the
following:
Processor
RAM
Controllers for standard peripheral
devices, such as the keyboard
Various ROM chips
Frequently used synonyms for system
board are

motherboard

and

logic board

.
Data stor ed in memory that t ells a com-
puter what hardware is installed and ho w
the computer should be configured for
operation.
System diskette is a synonym for

bootable

diskette

.
System memory is a synonym for

RAM

.
A BIOS-based program that allows you to
configu re your c omputer’s hardware a nd
customize the computer’s operation by
setting such features as password protec-
tion and energy management. Some
options in the System Setup program re-
quire that you reboot the computer (or the
computer may reboot automatically) in or-
der to make a hardware configuration
change. B ecause the System Setup pro-
gram is stored in NVRAM, any settings
remain in effect until you change them
again.
A start-up f ile for the Wi ndows operat ing
system . When you start W indows, it c on-
sults the system.ini file to determine a
variety of options for the Windows oper-
ating environment. Among other things,
the system.ini file records which video,
mouse, and keyboard drivers are installed
for Windows.
Running the Control Panel or Windows
Setup program may change options in the
system.ini file. O n other occasions, you
may need to change or add options to the
system.ini file manually with a text editor,
such as Notepad.
Some d evice s (su ch as the last devic e at
each end of a SCS I cab le) mus t be term i-
nated to prevent reflections and spurious
signals in the cable. When such devices
are connected in a series, you may need
to enable or disable the t ermination on
these devices by changing jumper or
switch settings on the devices or by
cha nging settings in th e configuration
software for the devices.
An application program for editing text
files consisting exclusively of ASCII char-
acters. Windows Notepad is a text editor,
for example. Most word proc es so rs use
propriet ary file forma ts con t ai nin g bi na ry
characters, although some can read and
write text files.
A video mode that can be defined as
x
columns by
y
rows of cha racters.
A specified period of system inactivity
that m ust occur before an energ y conse r-
vation feature is activated.
Abbreviation for tracks per inch.
Abbreviation for termi nate-a nd-s ta y-
resident. A TSR program runs “in the
backgrou nd.” Mo st TS R progra ms im ple-
ment a predefined key combination
(sometime s referred to a s a

hot key

) that
allows yo u to activate the TS R program’s
interface while running another program.
When you fin ish using the TSR pro gram,
you can return to the other application