DCB - Device Control Block, a small piece of memory used to
control the status, input, and output of data between the system
and the devices.
DCT - Drive Code Table, a piece of memory containing information
about the disk drives
and/or diskettes
in
them.
density
- Refers to the density of the data written to a diskette.
Double density provides approximately
80% more capacity than
single density.
device
- The two types of devices are Logical and Physical.
A logical device
is
one that
is
referred to
in
TRSDOS. Logical
devices have devspecs, a 2-character name that
is
prefixed with
an asterisk (*).
An
example of a logical device
is
*PR, which
is
normally used to send data
to
the printer.
A physical device
is
a piece of hardware, such as the video
display or printer. A piece of software called a "driver" connects
the logical device to the physical device by translating data from
the format used by logical devices into the format required by the
hardware, and vice versa.
devspec
- The name associated with a device by which it is
referenced. A devspec always consists of three characters: an
asterisk followed by two alphabetic characters.
directory - An area of a disk that contains the names of the files on
the disk, information on where the data
in
those files
is
stored on
the disk, and other information such as any password, the logical
record length, the modification date, and so on.
disk
I.D. - A disk's name and master password assigned when it
is
formatted.
*DO - The Video Display device.
:drive - Indicate that a drive number can be inserted where this is
used. A drive number must always be preceded immediately by
a"'"
driver - A program that interfaces a physical device (a piece of
hardware) to a logical device, which can be referenced by
TRSDOS.
EOF - End of File, a marker used to denote the end of a program or
data file.
lext
- The extension of a filespec. The use of lext
is
sometimes
optional.
An
extension's first character must be a
"I"
(slash)
which
is
followed by one to three alphanumeric characters, the
first of which must
be
a letter.
A-86
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