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(1)Provides user and application programs to comunicate with OS and request OS.
~Command Line~GUI~Menu + voice input. |
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(2)Controls communications with system's peripheral devices.
Input/Output Control Sys. (IOCS)
Keyboard etc. |
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(3)Implements routines that allow the user or programmer to create, delete, modify, and manipulate files by name.
FAT32, NTFS, EFS. |
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(4)Manages sys. main memory resources as comp runs.
Allocates space to apps.
Ensures that apps dont interfere with each other. |
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(5)Manages Processors time.
Threads, Queuing, Stools. |
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(6)Apps spread over two or more comps.
Each of theinterconnected comps has own OS with all necessary services.
Compatible communication service must be installed on both comps. |
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| Striping/Striped volume, Data written across all Hard Disks.2+ |
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| Mirroring/Mirrored Volume. The duplication of everything written to a hard drive.2+ |
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| RAID-5 VOlumes. Striping across 3+ drives with PARITY CHECKING, in case of drive failure, the standing drive will re-create the data stored on the failed drive. |
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| RAID 1+0 = Stripe + Mirror. can sustain multiple simultaneous drive failures. |
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| (Balanced Technology Extended) Form Factor used by motherboards and computer cases thatwas expected to replace ATX. It has higher quality fans, is designed for better air flow, and has improved structural support for the motherboard. The BTX form factor has not gained full acceptance by the computer manufacturer community. |
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| Common form factor for PC systems presently in use, originally introduced by Intel in 1995. ATX motherboards and cases make better use of space and resources that did the earlier AT form factor. |
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| Alternating Current: That cycles back and forth rather than one direction. US wall outlet= 110 and 115v. Europe= 220v. |
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| Accelerated Graphics Port; 32-bit wide buss standard developed specifically for video cards; AGP 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 8x standards. AGP is replaced by the PCI Express standards. |
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| American National Standards Institute: Nonprofit organization dedicated to creating trade and communications standards. |
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| Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface: Interface standard, part of the IDE/ATA standards, that allows tape drives, optical drives, and other drives to be treated like an IDE hard drive by the system. |
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| Basic Input/Output System: Firmware that can control much of a computers input/output functions, such as communication with the floppy drive and the monitor. |
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| Back-Side Bus: Portion of a processor's internal bus that connects the processor to the internal memory cashe. The bus operates at a much higher frequency that the front side bus. |
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| Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor: Technology used tomanufacture microchips. |
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| Central Processing Unit: Microprocessor/processor. Heart and brain of the computer, which recieves data input, processes information, and executes instructions. |
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| Direct Current: That travels in only one direction(batteries). COmputer powwer supplies transform AC to low DC. |
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| Double Data Rate, type of SDRAM. Memory tech. used on DIMM's that runs twice the speed of the system clock. |
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| Dual Inline Memory Module: Miniature circuit board installed on a motherboard to hold memory. DIMM's can hold up to 4 GB of RAM on a single module. |
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| Duel Inline Package Switch: switch on a circuit board or other device that can be set to on or off to hold configuration or setup info. |
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| Direct Memory Access Channel: Number identifying a channel whereby a device can pass data to memory without involving the CPU. Think of a DMA channel as a shortcut for data moving to/from the device and memory. |
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| Direct Memory Access Transfer Mode: Used by devices, including the hard drive, to tranfer data to memory without involving the CPU. |
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| Error-Correcting Code: Cipset feature on a motherboard that checks the integrity of data stored on DIMM's or RIMM's and can correct single-bit errors in a byte. More advanced ECC schemas can detect, but not correct, double-bit errors in a byte. |
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| Extended Data Out: Type of outdated RAM that was faster that conventional RAM because it eliminated the delay before it issued the next memory address. |
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| Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics: Standard for managing the inteface between secondary storage devices and a computer system. A system can support up to four parallel ATA IDE devices such as hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and DVD drives. |
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| Electro Static Discharge: Static electricity, which can damage chips and destroy motherboards, even though it might not be felt or seen with the naked eye. |
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| File Allocation Table: Table on a hard drive or floppy disk used by the FAT file system that tracks the clusters to contain a file. |
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| Floppy Disk Drive: drive that can hold either a 5.5 inch or 3.25 inch floppy disk, i.e. floppy drive. |
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| Fast Page Memory: outdated, pre-EDO memory. FPM improved on earlier memory types by sending the row address just once for many accesses to memory near that row. |
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| Front-Side Bus: System bus: Bus between the CPU and memory on the motherboard. The bus frequency in documentation is called the system speed, such as 400 MHz. |
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| General Protection Fault: Windows error that occurs when a program attempts to access a memory address that is not available or is no longer assigned to it. |
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| Hard Disk Drive: Main secondary storage device of a PC. Two technologies are currently used by hard drives: magnetic and solid state. |
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| Integrated Drive/Device Electronics: Hard drive whose disk controller is integrated into the drive, eliminating the need for a controller cable and thus increasing speed, as well as reducing price. |
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| Master Boot Record: First sector on a hard drive, which contains the partition table and a program the BIOS uses to boot an OS from the drive. |
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| Multimedia Extensions: instructions built into Intel processors to add functionality such as better processing of MM, SIMD support, and increased cache. |
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| New Tech. File System: Win 2000/XP/Vista OS. NTFS cannot be accessed by DOS mor WIN ME. Provides increased reliability and security in comparison to other methods of organizing and accessing files. Vista requires that NTFS be used for the volume on which Vista is installed. |
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| Parallel ATA: Older IDE cable method that used 40-pin flat or round data cable or an 80-pin conductor cable and a 40-pin IDE connector/ |
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| Peripheral Component Interconnect Bus: Common to desktop comps that uses 32-bit-wide or 64-bit data path. Several c=variations of PCI exist. One or more notches on a PCI slot keep the wrong PCI cards from being inserted on the PCE slot. |
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| Power-On Self Test: Self-diagnostic program used to perform a simple test of the CPU, RAM, and various I/O devices. The POST is performed by startup BIOS when the computer if first turned on, and is stored in ROM-BIOS. |
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| Redundant Array of Inexpensive/independent Disks: Several methods of configuring multiple hard drives to store data to increase logical volume size and improve performance, or to ensure that if one hard drive fails, the data is still available from another hard drive. |
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| Random Access Memory: Modules on the motherboard containing microchips used to temporarily hold data and programs while the CPU processes both. Info in RAM is lost when the PC is turned off. |
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| Read-only Memory: Chips that contain programming code and cannot be erased. |
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| Serial ATA: An ATAPI cabling method that usues a narrower and more reliable cable than the 80-conductor cable. |
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| Small Computer System Interface: Fast interface between a host adapter and the CPU that can daisy chain as many as 7 or 15 devices on a single bus. |
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| SIngle Inline Memory Module: Miniature circuit board used in older comps to hold RAM. SIMMs holds 8, 16, 32, or 64 MB on a single module. |
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| Solid State Disk/Drive: Hard drive that has no moving parts. |
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| Uninterruptible Power SUpply: Device designed to provide a backup power supply during a power failure. Battery backup system with ultrafast sensing device. |
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| Universal Serial Bus Port: Designed to make installation and configuration of I/O devices easy, providing room for as many as 127 devices daisy-chained together. |
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| Zero Insertion Force Socket: Socket that uses a small mever to apply even force when you install the microchip into the socket. |
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| Primary partition on the hard drive that boots the OS. Win 2000/XP/Vista calls the active partition the system partition. |
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| Small circuit board inserted in an expansion slot and used to communicate between the system bus and a peripheral device. |
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| Antistatic Wrist Strap/Ground Bracelet |
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Definition
| Attached to the comp case, ground mat, or another ground so that ESD is discharged from your body before you touch sensitive components inside a computer. |
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| Feature of system BIOS and hard drives that auto. ID and configures a new drive in BIOS setup. |
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| Way to Partition a hard rive, used by all versions of WIN, thta stores info. about the drive in a partition table at the beginning of the drive. |
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| WIN error that displays against a blue screen and causes the system to halt. Stop Error. |
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| OS program responsible for managing the process of loading the OS during the boot. |
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| First sector of floppy disk or hard drive volume, contains info on either. On a Hard drive, of the boot record is in the active partition, then it can be used to boot the OS. Boot SEctor. |
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| Temporary reductions in voltage, which can somties cause data loss. Sags |
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| Paths or lines on the motherboard on which data, instructions, and electrical power move from component to component. |
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| Collection of eight bits that can represent a single character. |
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| Fan inside a comp. case used to draw air out of or into the case. |
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| A goupr of chips on the motherboard that controls the timing and flow of data and instructions to and from the CPU. |
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| One or more sectors that constitute the smallest unit of space on a disk for storing data( also file allocation unit.) Files are ritten to a disk as groups of whole clusters. |
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| Restart the computer by turning off the power or by pressing the Reset button. |
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| Lines on the system bus that the CPU uses to send and receive data. |
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| Adapter cards designed to discover and report computer errors and conflicts at POST time (before comp boot up), often by displaying a number on the card. |
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| Exact Duplicate of a hard drive stored on another media such as a group od CD's or DVD's. Drive Imaging. |
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| Motherboard feature that improves memory performance by providing two 64-bit channels between memory and the chipset. DDR,2,3 DIMM's can use dual channels. |
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| Processor package that contains two core processors thus supporting four instructions at once! |
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| Circuit board inserted into a slot on the motherboard to enhance the capability of the computer. |
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| Narrow slot on the mother oard where an expansion card can be placed. Expansion slots connect to a bus on the motherboard. |
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| Only partition on a hard drive that can contain more than one logical drive. WIN, a hard drive can have only a single extended partition. |
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| Degree to which a system can tolerate failures. Adding redudant components, such as disk mirroring or disk duplexing is a way to build fault tolerance. |
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| Overall structure that an OS uses to name, store, and organise files on a disk. Examples of file ssystems are NTFS and FAT32. |
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| Software that is permanently stored in a chip. The BIOS on a motherboard is an example of firmware. |
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Definition
| Set of Specs on the size, shape, and config. of a comp. hardware component such as a case, power supply, or motherboard. |
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| Preparing a hard drive volume, logical drive, or floppy disk for use by placing tracks and sectors on its surface to stoe info. i.e: FORMAT A:). |
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| GHz: One Thousand MHz, or one billion cycles per second. |
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| Interface card installed in the comp. to control visual output on a monitor. Display adapter or graphics card. |
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| Physical components that constitute the comp. system, such as the monitor, keyboard, motherboard, and the printer. |
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| Top or bottom surface of one platter on a hard drive. Each platter has to heads. |
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| Piece of metal, with cooling fins, that can be attached to or mounted on an integrated chip( such as the CPU) to dissipate heat. |
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| Performed by WIN Format Program(FORMAT C:/s) WIN installation program, or the disk managment utility. The process creates the boot record, file system, and root directory on the volume or logical drive and makes he volume or drive bootable. OS Formatting. |
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| Circuit board that controls a SCSI bus supporting as many as seven or fifteen seperate devices. Host adapter controls communication between the scsi bus and the PC. |
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| Hot Plugging: Plugging in a device while the comp. is on. Comp. will sense the device and configure it without rebooting. In addition, the device can be unplugged without an OS error. |
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| Intel tech. that allows each logical processor within the processor package to handle an individual thread in parallel with other threads being handled by other processors within the package. |
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| Bus inside the CPU that is used for communication between the CPU's internal components. |
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| Two wires that stick up side by side on the motherboard or other device and are used to hold config. info. The jumper is considered closed if a cover is over the wires, and open if the cover is missing. |
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| Common input device through which data and instructions may be typed into comupter memory. |
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| Method to cool over clocked processors that uses a small pump inside the comp. case and tubes that move water or other liquid around components and then away from them to a place where fans can cool the liquid. |
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| A portion or all of a hard drive extended partition that is treated by the OS as though it were a physical drive. Each ligical drive is assigned a drive letter, such as drive F, and contains a file system. |
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| Process(usually performed at the factory) that electronically creates the hard drive tracks and sectors and tests for bad spots on the disk surface |
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| Physical microchips that can hold data and programming, located on the motherboard or expansion cards. |
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| Memory a Processor addresses at one time. Today's desktop and notebook processors use a memory bank that is 64 bits wide. |
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| Small amount of faster RAM that stores recently retrieved data, in anticipation of what the CPU will request next, thus speeding up access. |
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| Most versitile and popular comp case, whichis midrange in size and generally has around six expansion slots and four drive pays; provides moderate potential for expansion. |
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| WIN term for RAID1 level hat duplicates data on one drive to another drive and is used for fault tolerance. |
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| Most Commenly used output device for displaying text and graphics and a comp. |
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| Main borad in the comp(system board). The CPU, ROM chips, DIMMs, RIMMs, and interface cards are plugged into the motheboard. |
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| Pointing and input device that allows the use to move a cursor around a screen and select items with the click of a button. |
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| Device used to measure the various components of an electrical circuit. The most common measurements are voltage, current, and resistance. |
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| RAM that is stable and can hold data as long as electricity is powering the memory. |
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| Portion of the chipset hug that connects faster I/O buses(AGP buses to the system bus). |
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| Ports that are directly on the motherboard, such as a built-in keyboard port or on-board network port. |
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| Running a processor at a higher frequency than is recommended by the manufacturer, which can result in an unstable system, popular for gaming! |
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| Power connection on an ATX or BTW motherboard, which can have 20-24 pins. |
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| Female 25-pin port on a comp that can transmit data in parallel, 8 bits at a time, and is usualy used with a printer. Ports: LPT1 and LPT2. |
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Definition
| Error-checking sceme in which a ninth, or "parity," bit is added, the value of the parity bit isset to either 0 or 1 to provide an even number of ones for even parity and an odd number ones for an odd parity. |
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| Devices that communicate with the CPU but are not located directly on the motherboard, such as monitor, floppy drive, printer, and mouse. |
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Definition
1) Number assigned at a process on a comp so that the process can be found by TCP/IP.(port address or port number)
2) I/O address. 3) Physical connector, usually at the back of a comp, that allows a cable from a peripheral device, such as a printer, mouse, or modem, to be attached. |
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Definition
| Box inside a computer case that supplies power to the motherboard and other installed devices. (PSU: Power Supply Unit) |
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| Hard disk partition that can contain only one volume. THe primary partition or volume contains a file system. In WIN, a hard drive can have up to 3 primary's. |
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| Temp. on motherboard used by the CPU to process data and instructions: Memory. |
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| Peripheral output device that produces printed output to paper. Matrix, ink-jet, laser. |
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| At which the CPU operates. GHz. |
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| Set or rules and standards that two entities use for communication. |
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| Processor package that contains four cores and supports eight instructions at once. |
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| Vista uses a flashdrive or secure digital(SD) memory card to boost hard drive performance. |
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| Card that plugs into a motherboard and allows for expansion cards to be mounted parallel to the motherboard. Expansion cards are plugged into slots on the riser card. |
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Definition
| Remote to the CPU and permanently holds data, even when the PC is off, hard drive. |
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| On a disk surface one segment of a track, which almost always contains 512 bytes of data. |
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| Male 9-25-pin port on a comp sys. used by slower I/O devices such as mouse or modem. COM1,2,3,4. |
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Definition
| Male 9-25-pin port on a comp sys. used by slower I/O devices such as mouse or modem. COM1,2,3,4. |
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Definition
| Type of dynamic volume used on a single hard drive that corresponds to a primary partition on a hard disk. |
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| Memory controlly on a mother board that accesses only one DIMM @ a time. |
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| COmpact Case: Low-end low profile cases, NLX, LPX, or Mini LPX form factors, less drive bays, some expansion. |
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Definition
| COmp. programs or instructions to perform a specific tack. Software maybe BIOS, OS, or apps such as a work proccessing or spreadsheet program. |
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Definition
| Portion of the chipset hub that connects slowerI/O buses(PCI buss) to the sys. bus. |
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| Standoffs:Round plastic or metal pegs tha separate the motherboard fromthe case, so that components on thebakc on the motherboard dont touch the case. |
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Definition
| Using a spanned volume to increase the size of a volume. |
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Definition
| Type of dynamic volume used for two or more hard drives that wires to the disks evenly rather that filling up allotted space on one ant then moving on to the next. vs. spanned volume. |
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Definition
| Surge Suppressor: Device or power strip designedto protect electronic equipment from power surges and spikes. |
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Definition
| Added at the end of a SCSI chain to dampen the voltage at the end of the chain. |
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| Creamlike substance that is placed between the botom of the cooler heatsink and the top of the processor to eliminate air pockets and to help to draw heat off the processor. |
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Definition
| Largest type of personal comp. case. Stand vertically and can be as high as two feet tall, more drive bays for expected upgrades. |
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Definition
| One of many concentric circles on the surface of a hard drive or floppy disk. |
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| 3 processors and 6 processes at once. |
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| RAM that is temp. cannot hold data very long and must be frequently used. |
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| Measure of potential difference in an electrican circuit. ATX: +12v, -12v, +5v, -5v, and +3.3v |
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Definition
| Clock tick in which nothing happens, used to ensure that the microprocessor isn't getting ahead of slower components. |
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| Restart the PC without of power, clicking button "Restart." |
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| Unit ued to measure power. Typical cump. may use a power supply that provides 500W |
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