Glossary
the bytes arrive simultaneously, as op- posed to serial transmission in which bits arrive one by one.
Parallel Port - A connection for a printer or similar peripheral. Gener- ally, parallel ports are output only. See Bidirectional Parallel Port and ECP.
PCI - An acronym for Peripheral Component Interconnect. A high per- formance
Pentium - A high performance
Plug and Play - A standard developed to ensure easy installation of periph- erals. Theoretically, a newly installed card will automatically configure itself and work properly without requiring jumper configuration or device driv- ers.
POST - An acronym for Power On Self Test. A diagnostic program that is run whenever the system is cold booted.
RAM - An acronym for Random Access Memory. A type of memory that is used as the “working memory” of a computer system. See DRAM and SRAM.
ROM - An acronym for Read Only Memory. A type of memory that re- tains its data without requiring power. Once written, it cannot be modified. See EPROM and Flash ROM.
SCSI - Small computer system inter- face. A bus interface standard that defines physical and electrical char- acteristics for hardware devices. SCSI provides a standard interface that en- ables many different kinds of devices, such as disk drives and
Serial - A type of data transmission in which the data is sent one bit at a time over a single wire. See Parallel.
Serial Port - A communications port used to connect peripherals such as modems and mice.
Setup - A program that allows you to make changes to the system configu- ration.
Shadow RAM - A technique used to load a duplicate copy of BIOS from slower ROM into faster RAM. This enhances system performance be- cause it provides higher access speed to the BIOS.
Small Computer System Interface -
See SCSI.
SRAM - An acronym for Static Ran- dom Access Memory. A type of memory that can retain data without requiring a regular clock signal.
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