Specifications

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INTERRUPT:
Special operation used by hardware peripheral devices to allow them to communicate
with the Central Processing Unit. Each peripheral device is allocated a unique interrupt
number which the CPU recognizes when talking to the device.
ISA:
Industry Standard Architecture.
JUMPER:
A patch cable, wire or other such device used to establish a circuit.
MEMORY:
RAM and ROM are devices used to hold information and programs while they are
being accessed by the system.
MICROPROCESSOR:
Also known as the CPU. The "brain" of the system, which contains the circuitry used
for calculation and communication with the rest of the system.
PAGE MODE:
Special function in DRAM that saves cycle time by not re-loading the “Row Address
strobe bits”.
PARALLEL PORT:
Also called "printer port", or LPT 1:, the parallel port is used to attach a printer or other
peripheral using a Centronics
†
parallel cable.
PARITY BIT:
An additional non-informational bit appended to a group of 8 bits to make the number
of ones in the group of bits either even or odd. This is an elementary error correction
mechanism. Example: During a subsequent read from a memory location, and using
odd parity, the system will check the sum of ones. If the sum of ones is NOT still odd
then the system knows that the information at that location has been corrupted.
SERIAL PORT:
Communication port used by the computer to communicate with the outside world. An
IBM PC compatible normally recognizes four standard serial ports: COM1, COM2,
COM3 and COM4 which are used to attach a mouse, modems, serial printers, plotters
and other serial devices
SHADOW RAM:
Refers to the technique of copying BIOS routines from slower ROM chips to faster
RAM, thereby increasing system performance