Reference Guide

Glossary 669
Glossary
The following list defines or identifies technical terms, abbreviations, and acronyms used in
Dell™ user documents.
A
Abbreviation for ampere(s).
AC
Abbreviation for alternating current.
AC power switch
A switch with two AC power inputs that provides
AC power redundancy by failing over to a standby
AC input in the event of a failure to the
primary AC input.
access
Refers to the actions a user can take on a variable value.
Examples include read-only and read-write.
adapter card
An expansion card that plugs into an expansion-card
connector on the computer’s system board. An adapter
card adds some specialized function to the computer
by providing an interface between the expansion bus
and a peripheral device. Examples of adapter cards
include network cards, sound cards, and SCSI adapters.
ADB
Abbreviation for assign database.
AGP
Abbreviation for Advanced Graphics Port. A high
performance graphics interface becoming available for
Pentium Pro systems.
ASCII
Acronym for American Standard Code for Information
Interchange. A text file containing only characters from
the ASCII character set (usually created with a text
editor, such as Notepad in Microsoft
®
Windows
®
), is
called an ASCII file.
ASIC
Acronym for application-specific integrated circuit.
ASPI
Advanced SCSI programming interface.
ASR
Abbreviation for automatic system recovery.
asset tag code
An individual code assigned to a computer, usually by
a system administrator, for security or tracking
purposes.
attribute
An attribute, or property, contains a specific piece of
information related to a component. Attributes can be
combined to form groups. If an attribute is defined as
read-write, it may be defined by a management
application.
autoexec.bat file
The autoexec.bat file is executed when you boot your
computer (after executing any commands in the
config.sys file). This start-up file contains commands
that define the characteristics of each device connected
to your computer, and it finds and executes programs
stored in locations other than the active directory.