Dell PowerEdge 350 - Manual (Page 50)

4 User’s Guide
expansion-card connector
A connector on the system's system
board for plugging in an expansion card.
external cache memory
A RAM cache using SRAM chips. Be-
cause SRAM chips operate at several
times the speed of DRAM chips, the
microprocessor can retrieve data and in-
structions faster from external cache
memory than from RAM.
F
Abbreviation for Fahrenheit.
flash memory
A type of EEPROM chip that can be repro-
grammed from a utility on diskette while
still installed in a system; most EEPROM
chips can only be rewritten with special
programming equipment.
format
To prepare a hard-disk drive or diskette for
storing files. An unconditional format de-
letes all data stored on the disk. The
format command in MS-DOS 5.0 or higher
includes an option that allows you to un-
format a disk if you have not yet used the
disk for file storage.
ft
Abbreviation for foot/feet.
g
Abbreviation for gram(s).
G
Abbreviation for gravities.
GB
Abbreviation for gigabyte(s). A gigabyte
equals 1024 megabytes or
1,073,741,824 bytes.
GUI
Acronym for graphical user interface.
h
Abbreviation for hexadecimal.
host adapter
A host adapter implements communica-
tion between the system's bus and the
controller for a peripheral. (Hard-disk drive
controller subsystems include integrated
host adapter circuitry.) To add a SCSI ex-
pansion bus to your system, you must
install the appropriate host adapter.
Hz
Abbreviation for hertz.
IC
Abbreviation for integrated circuit.
I/O
Abbreviation for input/output. The key-
board and a printer, for example, are I/O
devices. In general, I/O activity can be dif-
ferentiated from computational activity.
For example, when a program sends a
document to the printer, it is engaging in
I/O activity; when the program sorts a list
of terms, it is engaging in computational
activity.
ID
Abbreviation for identification.
IDE
Integrated drive electronics.
IP
Acronym for Internet Protocol.
IRQ
Abbreviation for interrupt request. A sig-
nal that data is about to be sent to or
received by a peripheral travels by an IRQ
line to the microprocessor. Each peripher-
al connection must be assigned an IRQ
number. For example, the first serial port
in your system (COM1) is assigned to
IRQ4 by default. Two devices can share
the same IRQ assignment, but you cannot
operate both devices simultaneously.
K
Abbreviation for kilo-, indicating 1000.
KB
Abbreviation for kilobyte(s), 1024 bytes.
KB/sec
Abbreviation for kilobyte(s) per second.