Filter
Top Products
Glossary 13
screen. To take advantage of this technol-
ogy, you must have a SMART-compliant
hard-disk drive and the proper support in
the system BIOS.
Abbreviation for Simple Network
Management Protocol. SNMP is an
industry-standard interface that allows a
network manager to remotely monitor
and manage workstations.
Abbreviation for static random-access
memory. Because SRAM chips do not re-
quire continual refreshing, they are
substantially faster than DRAM chips.
Abbreviation for sound retrieval system.
Abbreviation for super video graphics ar-
ray. VGA and SVGA are video standards
for video adapters with greater resolution
and color display capabilities than previ-
ous standards.
To display a program at a specific resolu-
tion, you must install the appropriate
video drivers and your monitor must sup-
port the resolution. Similarly, the number
of colors that a program can display de-
pends on the capabilities of the monitor,
the video driver, and the amount of video
memory installed in the computer.
On a computer system board, switches
control various circuits or functions in your
computer system. These switches are
known as
DIP switches;
they are normally
packaged in groups of two or more
switches in a plastic case. Two common
DIP switches are used on system boards:
slide
switches and
rocker
switches. The
names of the switches are based on how
the settings (on and off) of the switches
are changed.
The rules that dictate how you must type
a command or instruction so that the com-
puter understands it.
As the main circuit board, the system
board usually contains most of your com-
puter’s integral components, such as the
following:
Microprocessor
RAM
Controllers for standard peripheral
devices, such as the keyboard
Various ROM chips
Frequently used synonyms for system
board are
motherboard
and
logic board
.
Data stored in memory that tells a com-
puter what hardware is installed and how
the computer should be configured for
operation.
System diskette is a synonym for
bootable
diskette
.
System memory is a synonym for
RAM
.
A BIOS-based program that allows you to
configure your computer’s hardware and
customize the computer’s operation by
setting such features as password protec-
tion and energy management. Some
options in the System Setup program re-
quire that you reboot the computer (or the
computer may reboot automatically) in or-
der to make a hardware configuration
change. Because the System Setup pro-
gram is stored in NVRAM, any settings
remain in effect until you change them
again.
A start-up file for the Windows operating
system. When you start Windows, it con-
sults the system.ini file to determine a
variety of options for the Windows oper-
ating environment. Among other things,
the system.ini file records which video,