Glossary
A — Ampere(s).
AC — Alternating current.
A C P I — Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. A standard interface for enabling the operating system to direct configuration and power management.
A M B I E N T T E M P E R A T U R E — The temperature of the area or room where the system is located.
ANSI — American National Standards Institute. The primary organization for developing technology standards in the U.S.
A P P L I C A T I O N — Software designed to help you perform a specific task or series of tasks. Applications run from the operating system.
ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
A S S E T T A G — An individual code assigned to a system, usually by an administrator, for security or tracking purposes.
B A C K U P — A copy of a program or data file. As a precaution, back up your system’s hard drive on a regular basis. Before making a change to the configuration of your system, back up important
B A C K U P B A T T E R Y — A battery that maintains system configuration, date, and time information in a special section of memory when the system is turned off.
B E E P C O D E — A diagnostic message in the form of a pattern of beeps from your system’s speaker. For example, one beep, followed by a second beep, and then a burst of three beeps is beep code
BIOS — Basic input/output system. Your system’s BIOS contains programs stored on a flash memory chip. The BIOS controls communications between the processor and peripheral devices and miscellaneous functions, such as system messages
B I T — The smallest unit of information interpreted by your system.
B L A D E — A module that contains a processor, memory, and a hard drive. The modules are mounted into a chassis that includes power supplies and fans.
BMC — Baseboard management controller.
B O O T R O U T I N E — A program that clears all memory, initializes devices, and loads the operating system when you start your system. Unless the operating system fails to
respond, you can reboot (also called warm boot) your system by pressing
Glossary
