Appendix D, Glossary
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Hard drive A mechanism that reads and writes data on a hard disk.
Many disk drives improve their performance through a
technique called caching. The most common interfaces for
transferring data between a hard disk and a computer are
IDE and SCSI.
Internet Service
Provider (ISP)
A company that provides customers with dial-up access via
a modem to the Internet.
Interrupt Request
(IRQ)
A request generated by an installed or attached device to get
the microprocessor’s attention.
Jumpers Small plastic connectors that fit over exposed wires on an
expansion card. Jumpers typically are used to configure
legacy expansion cards.
KB
An abbreviation for kilobytes. A kilobyte equals 1,024
bytes.
Legacy The term applied to pre-PnP ISA expansion cards.
MB
An abbreviation for megabytes. A megabyte equals
1,048,576 bytes.
Microprocessor Synonymous with Central Processing Unit (CPU).
Motherboard The main board in your computer. The motherboard
contains major components such as RAM, expansion cards,
and the microprocessor.
Multimedia The delivery of information that combines different content
formats (for example, audio, still images, graphics,
animation, motion video, and text).
Network Two or more computers linked together.
OC-12 fiber-optic
line
A 600 Mbps connection, 400 times faster than T-1 lines.