Glossary

serial: Processes that occur one at a time. In communications, it means the transmission of one bit at a time sequentially over a single channel. On your computer, the serial port provides a serial interface between the computer and an appropriate device. Compare parallel.

SIO: Serial Input/Output. The electronic methodology used in serial data transmission.

soft key: Key combinations that emulate keys on the IBM keyboard, change some configuration options, stop program execution, and access the numeric keypad overlay.

software: The set of programs, procedures and related documentation associated with a computer system. Specifically refers to computer programs that direct and control the computer system’s activities. See also hardware.

stop bit: One or more bits of a byte that follow the transmitted character or group codes in asynchronous serial communications.

synchronous: Having a constant time interval between successive bits, characters or events.

system disk: A diskette that contains the operating system files needed to start the computer. Any diskette can be formatted as a system disk. A system disk is also called a "bootable disk", "boot disk" or a "startup disk." Compare non-system disk.

T

terminal: A typewriter-like keyboard and CRT display screen connected to the computer for data input/output.

TFT display: A liquid crystal display (LCD) made from an array of liquid crystal cells using active-matrix technology with thin film transistor (TFT) to drive each cell.

Touch Pad: A pointing device integrated into the TOSHIBA computer palm rest.

U

USB: Universal Serial Bus. This serial interface lets you communicate with several devices connected in a chain to a single port on the computer.

V

VGA: Video Graphics Array is an industry standard video adaptor that lets you run any popular software.

volatile memory: Random access memory (RAM) that stores information as long as power is supplied to the computer.

User’s Manual

Glossary-13

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Toshiba toshiba satellite user manual Glossary-13