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184 Glossary
expansion bus — Your system contains an expansion bus that allows the processor to
communicate with controllers for peripherals, such as NICs.
expansion card — An add-in card, such as a NIC or SCSI adapter, that plugs into an
expansion-card connector on the system board. An expansion card adds some
specialized function to the system by providing an interface between the expansion
bus and a peripheral.
expansion-card connector — A connector on the system board or riser board for
plugging in an expansion card.
F — Fahrenheit.
FAT — File allocation table. The file system structure used by MS-DOS to organize
and keep track of file storage. The Microsoft
®
Windows
®
operating systems can
optionally use a FAT file system structure.
flash memory — A type of EEPROM chip that can be reprogrammed 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 drive or diskette for storing files. An unconditional format
deletes all data stored on the disk.
FSB — Front-side bus. The FSB is the data path and physical interface between the
processor and the main memory (RAM).
ft — Feet.
FTP — File transfer protocol.
g — Gram(s).
G — Gravities.
Gb — Gigabit(s); 1024 megabits or 1,073,741,824 bits.
GB — Gigabyte(s); 1024 megabytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes. However, when referring
to hard-drive capacity, the term is usually rounded to 1,000,000,000 bytes.
graphics mode — A video mode that can be defined as x horizontal by y vertical pixels
by z colors.
group — As it relates to DMI, a group is a data structure that defines common
information, or attributes, about a manageable component.
guarding — A type of data redundancy in which a set of physical drives stores data and
an additional drive stores parity data. See also mirroring, striping, and RAID.
h — Hexadecimal. A base-16 numbering system, often used in programming to
identify addresses in the system’s RAM and I/O memory addresses for devices. In text,
hexadecimal numbers are often followed by h.