Dell PowerVault 715N (Rackmount NAS Appliance) - Manual (Page 22)

An information pathway between the components of a system. Your system contains an expansion bus that allows the
microprocessor to communicate with controllers for all the various peripheral devices connected to the system. Your
system also contains an address bus and a data bus for communications between the microprocessor and RAM.
byte
Eight contiguous bits of information, the basic data unit used by your system.
C
Abbreviation for Celsius.
cache
A fast storage area that keeps a copy of data or instructions for quicker data retrieval. For example, your system's BIOS
may cache ROM code in faster RAM, or a disk-cache utility may reserve RAM in which to store frequently accessed
information from your system's disk drives; when a program makes a request to a drive for data that is in the cache, the
disk-cache utility can retrieve the data from RAM faster than from the hard drive.
COMn
The device names for the first through fourth serial ports on your system are COM1, COM2, COM3, and COM4. The default
interrupt for COM1 and COM3 is IRQ4, and the default interrupt for COM2 and COM4 is IRQ3. Therefore, you must be
careful when configuring software that runs a serial device so that you do not create an interrupt conflict.
controller
A chip that controls the transfer of data between the microprocessor and memory or between the micro-processor and a
peripheral device such as a hard drive or the keyboard.
control panel
The part of the system that contains indicators and controls, such as the power switch, hard drive access indicator, and
power indicator.
conventional memory
The first 640 KB of RAM. Conventional memory is found in all systems. Unless they are specially designed, MS-DOS®
programs are limited to running in conventional memory.
coprocessor
A chip that relieves the system's microprocessor of specific processing tasks. A math coprocessor, for example, handles
numeric processing. A graphics coprocessor handles video rendering. The Intel® Pentium® microprocessor, for example,
includes a built-in math coprocessor.
CM
Abbreviation for centimeter.
CPU
Abbreviation for central processing unit. See microprocessor.
DC
Abbreviation for direct current.
Diagnostics