Toshiba Satellite A300D - Manual (Page 175)

User’s Manual 14
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.
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.