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Glossary 5
hardware. DMI collects information about
the system’s components, such as the
operating system, memory, peripherals,
expansion cards, and asset tag. Informa-
tion about the system’s components is
displayed as a MIF file or through the Dell
Inspector program.
Abbreviation for Desktop Management
Task Force, a consortium of companies
representing hardware and software
providers, of which Dell Computer Corpo-
ration is a member.
Abbreviation for dots per inch.
Abbreviation for Display Power Manage-
ment Signaling. A standard developed by
the Video Electronics Standards Associa-
tion (VESA
®
) that defines the hardware
signals sent by a video controller to acti-
vate power management states in a
monitor. A monitor is said to be DPMS-
compliant when it is designed to enter a
power management state after receiving
the appropriate signal from a computer’s
video controller.
Abbreviation for dynamic random-access
memory. A computer’s RAM is usually
made up entirely of DRAM chips. Be-
cause DRAM chips cannot store an
electrical charge indefinitely, your com-
puter continually refreshes each DRAM
chip in the computer.
Your computer can recognize a number of
specific hard-disk drives. Each is assigned
a drive-type number that is stored in
NVRAM. The hard-disk drive(s) specified
in your computer’s System Setup pro-
gram must match the actual drive(s)
installed in the computer. The System
Setup program also allows you to specify
physical parameters (logical cylinders,
logical heads, cylinder number, and logical
sectors per pack) for drives not included
in the table of drive types stored in
NVRAM.
Abbreviation for digital signal processing.
Abbreviation for data terminal equipment.
Any device, such as a computer system,
that can send data in digital form by
means of a cable or communications line.
The DTE is connected to the cable or
communications line through a data com-
munications equipment (DCE) device,
such as a modem.
Abbreviation for error checking and
correction.
Abbreviation for Extended Capabilities
Port.
Acronym for electrically erasable pro-
grammable read-only memory.
Abbreviation for enhanced integrated
drive electronics. EIDE devices add one
or more of the following enhancements
to the traditional IDE standard:
Data transfer rates of up to
16 MB/sec
Support for drives other than just
hard-disk drives, such as CD-ROM
and tape drives
Support for hard-disk drives with
capacities greater than 528 MB
Support for up to two controllers,
each with up to two devices
attached
Acronym for Extended Industry-Standard
Architecture, a 32-bit expansion-bus de-
sign. The expansion-card connectors in an
EISA computer are also compatible with
8- or 16-bit ISA expansion cards.
To avoid a configuration conflict when in-
stalling an EISA expansion card, you must
use the EISA Configuration Utility. This
utility allows you to specify which