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

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

conventional memory — The first 640 KB of RAM. Conventional memory is found in all systems. Unless they are specially designed, MS-DOS®programs are limited to running in conventional memory.

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

CPU — Central processing unit. See processor.

DC — Direct current.

DDR — Double-data rate. A technology in memory modules that potentially doubles the output.

device driver — A program that allows the operating system or some other program to interface correctly with a peripheral. Some device drivers—such as network drivers—must be loaded from the config.sys file or as memory-resident programs (usually, from the autoexec.bat file). Others must load when you start the program for which they were designed.

DHCP — Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. A method of automatically assigning an IP address to a client system.

diagnostics — A comprehensive set of tests for your system.

DIMM — Dual in-line memory module. See also memory module.

DIN — Deutsche Industrie Norm.

directory — Directories help keep related files organized on a disk in a hierarchical, “inverted tree” structure. Each disk has a “root” directory. Additional directories that branch off the root directory are called subdirectories. Subdirectories may contain additional directories branching off them.

Glossary

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