Display adapter card

A circuit board that can be installed in one of the computer’s option slots to control the way a monitor displays text and graphics. A VGA display adapter is built into your computer’s main system board. Also called video card.

DOS

Disk Operating System. The generic term for the operating system software that controls a computer and directs its input and output functions. See also MS-DOSand Operating system.

Double-density

A type of diskette format that allows you to store twice as much data as the standard-density format. A 3.5-inch, double-density diskette can store 720KB of data. A 5.25~inch, double-density diskette can store 360KB of data.

Drive designator

The letter name of a disk drive, followed by a colon-for example, C : .

EGA

Enhanced Graphics Adapter. A type of display adapter card that allows you to display high-resolution graphics on an EGA monitor. It can display up to 43 lines of text with 80 characters on each line, or it can display monochrome or 16-color graphics at resolutions up to 640 x 350.

Expanded memory

Memory that specially-written MS-DOS programs can use when an expanded memory manager program maps that memory into an accessible area. See also Memory manager.

8Glossary