User guide

support.dell.com Glossary 11

An I/O port used most often to connect a
parallel printer to your computer. You can
usually identify a parallel port on your com-
puter by its 25-hole connector.

A value or option that you specify to a pro-
gram. A parameter is sometimes called a
switch or an argument.

You can divide a hard-disk drive into mul-
tiple physical sections called partitions
with the
fdisk
command. Each partition
can contain multiple logical drives. For ex-
ample, you could partition a 2-GB hard-disk
drive into two physically separate parti-
tions with three logical drive assignments,
as shown in the following table.
After partitioning the hard-disk drive, you
must format each logical drive with the
format command.

Slightly larger than a credit card, a PC Card
is a removable I/O card—such as a mo-
dem, LAN, SRAM, or flash memory
card—that adheres to the PCMCIA stan-
dards. See also PCMCIA.

Abbreviation for Peripheral Component
Interconnect. A standard for local-bus im-
plementation developed by Intel
Corporation.
(
Abbreviation for Personal Computer
Memory Card International Association.
See also PC Card.

Acronym for primary domain controller.
,'
Acronym for PowerEdge Expandable
RAID controller.
*
An internal or external device—such as a
printer, a disk drive, or a keyboard—con-
nected to a computer.
)
Abbreviation for pin grid array, a type of
microprocessor socket that allows you to
remove the microprocessor chip.

Arranged in rows and columns, a pixel is
a single point on a video display. Video
resolution—640 x 480, for example—is
expressed as the number of pixels across
by the number of pixels up and down.
 "
Acronym for power-on self-test. Before
the operating system loads when you turn
on your computer, the POST tests various
system components such as RAM, the
disk drives, and the keyboard.

Abbreviation for pages per minute.
1&
Abbreviation for plastic quad flat pack, a
type of microprocessor socket in which
the microprocessor chip is permanently
mounted.

The set of diskettes from which you can
perform a complete installation of an ap-
plication program. When you reconfigure
a program, you often need its program dis-
kette set.

An operating mode supported by 80286
or higher microprocessors, protected
mode allows operating systems to
implement:
 
Partition 1 - 1.2 GB / Partition
2 - 800 MB
  
Drive C - 1.2 GB / Drive D - 500 MB /
Drive E - 300 MB