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A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q| R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z- Boot Sector A boot sector is an area located on the first track of a floppy disk, hard disk or any other media that contains a loader program which is a few hundred bytes for loading the operating system into the memory and then transfer control to it.
- DMA Direct Memory Access/Addressing: A method of transferring data from one memory area to another without having to go through the central processing unit.
- Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) A special-purpose chip and associated circuitry that directs and controls reading from and writing to a computer's disk drive.
- Internal cache A small amount of very fast RAM that is stored inside the CPU. It is faster than External or L2 cache and is referred to as L1 or Level 1 cache. This memory acts as a place for the processor to store instructions and data for immediately required instructions.
- IRQ Interrupt Request: A logic signal directed to a specific processor input port which causes the processor to suspend normal instruction execution temporarily and to start executing an interrupt handler routine.
- Master Boot Record The first sector of a hard drive, which by convention contains a loader program for starting an operating system.
- Parity Checking A technique of error detection in which extra bits are added to the data character so that the number of logic one bits per character is always even, or always odd, or always a mark condition, or always a space condition.
- Plug and Play A standard that gives computer users the ability to plug a device into a computer and have the device recognized automatically. This function is performed by the operating system.
- ROM Read-Only Memory (ROM) is used as a storage medium in computers. ROM is primarily used by the distribution of firmware (software that is very closely related to hardware and not likely to need frequent upgrading).
- Semiconductor An element, such as silicon, that is intermediate in electrical conductivity between conductors and insulators, through which conduction takes place by means of holes and electrons. In other words, a semiconductor is a material that has much lower resistance to the flow of electrical current in one direction than in another.
- Transistor Transistors are tiny electrical parts that can be found in every electrical device. Transistors have two key properties:
- Virus A program that can “infect” other programs by modifying them to include a, possibly evolved, copy of itself.
