| A | B |
|---|
| IDE | Intergrated drive electronics. A method of dickdrive manufacturing that allocates all the required controller circutry in that drive itself. IDE is the standard hardrive interface for PCs You can connect a maximum of 2 hardrives to an IDE connection or channel. |
| Enhanced IDE (EIDE) | Allows for two IDE channels that can each support 2 devices |
| AT Attachment (ATA) | Mor commonly known as IDE, the "AT" refers to the IBM-AT computer where this interface was first used. Also known as the ISA bus. This is a 16bit data bus |
| ATA-33 | An extension to the ATA interface (IDE) that will effectively double the top data transfer speed up to 33Mps. Also known as Ultra-IDE. |
| SCSI | Small Computer Standard Interface. A standard data pathway used mostly for hard drives and CD-ROM drives, but also a common interface for scanners and sometimes printers |
| Millisecond | One thousandth of a second. Usually used to measure the access speed of hard drives. |
| System Hang | When a program fails, it usually has an opportunity to display an error or diagonostic message. If the entire system fails, such a message will not appear and input is usally blocked(key strocks, and mouse clicks) In the worst cases the system cannot be restared without turning the system off completely |
| POST | Power-On Self Test. A group of ROM BIOS diagnostic tests that are performed on the system each time it is powered up |
| Cold Boot | To turn on a computer, or to restart a computer by turning it off, waiting a few second and turning it on again. |
| Warm Boot | To restart (reset) a computer by pressing Ctril + Alt + Delete |
| Boot Disk | A write-protected floppy disk that cantains the computer's system and start up files |
| Boot Sector | A portin of a disk that comtains the codded instructions for the operating system to start the computer |
| Safe mode | This is a windows 95 mode that is automatically loaded if windows 95 crashes during boot up. You can access safe mode anytime if you press the f8 key when the screen says "loading windows 95" |
| Scanner | A device used to copy an image from a physical source (such as a photograph) into a computer |
| LPT1 | The label used in MS-DOS assigned to parallel port 1 |
| COM1 | The label in MS-DOS assigned to serial port 1 |
| MTBF | Mean Time Between Failures. This is a time normally gievn in hours that predicts the failures of a device. |
