Dell Precision 610 - Manual (Page 125)

system fails to respond, you can reboot (also called warm boot)
your computer by pressing < Ctrl><Alt><Del>; otherwise, you
must perform a cold boot by pressing the reset button or by
turning the computer off and then back on.
bootable diskette
A diskette that can boot your computer to the operating system
in the event that the computer will not boot from the hard-disk
drive.
bpi
Abbreviation for bits per inch.
bps
Abbreviation for bits per second.
BTU
Abbreviation for British thermal unit.
bus
An information pathway between the components of a
computer. Your computer contains an expansion bus that
allows the processor to communicate with controllers for all the
various peripheral devices connected to the computer. Your
computer also contains an address bus and a data bus for
communications between the processor and RAM.
byte
Eight contiguous bits of information, the basic data unit used
by your computer.
C
Abbreviation for Celsius.
cache
A fast storage area that keeps a copy of data or instructions
for quicker data retrieval. For example, your computer'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 computer's disk drives; when a program
makes a request to a disk drive for data that is in the cache,
the disk-cache utility can retrieve the data from RAM faster
than from the disk drive.
card-edge connector
You can divide a hard-disk drive into multiple physical sections
called partitions with the fdisk command. Each partition can
contain multiple logical drives.
After partitioning the hard-disk drive, you must format each
logical drive with the format command.
PCI
Abbreviation for Peripheral Component Interconnect. A
standard for local-bus implementation developed by Intel
Corporation.
peripheral device
An internal or external device-such as a printer, a disk drive, or
a keyboard-connected to a computer.
PGA
Abbreviation for pin grid array, a type of processor socket that
allows you to remove the processor chip.
pixel
A single point on a video display. Pixels are arranged in rows
and columns to create an image. A video resolution, such as
640 x 480, is expressed as the number of pixels across by the
number of pixels up and down.
Plug and Play
An industry-standard specification that makes it easier to add
hardware devices to personal computers. Plug and Play
provides automatic installation and configuration, compatibility
with existing hardware, and dynamic support of mobile
computing environments.
POST
Acronym for power-on self-test. Before the operating system
loads when you turn on your computer, the POST tests various
system components such as RAM, the disk drives, and the
keyboard.
ppm
Abbreviation for pages per minute.
PQFP
Abbreviation for plastic quad flat pack, a type of processor
socket in which the processor chip is permanently mounted.
"processor"
The primary computational chip inside the computer that
controls the interpretation and execution of arithmetic and logic