Dell PowerEdge 400SC User Manual

Page 20

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control panel

 

The part of the system that contains indicators and controls, such as the power switch and power indicator

 

controller

 

A chip that controls the transfer of data between the processor and memory or between the processor and a peripheral

 

conventional memory

 

The first 640 KB of RAM. Conventional memory is found in all systems. Unless they are specially designed, MS-DOS® programs are limited to running in

conventional memory.

 

coprocessor

 

A chip that relieves the system's processor of specific processing tasks. A math coprocessor, for example, handles numeric processing.

 

CPU

 

Central processing unit. See processor.

 

DC

 

Direct current

 

DDR

 

Double-data rate

 

device driver

 

A program that allows the operating system or some other program to interface correctly with a peripheral. Some device drivers—such as network drivers—

must be loaded from the config.sys file or as memory-resident programs (usually, from the autoexec.bat file). Others must load when you start the program
for which they were designed.

 

DHCP

 

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

 

diagnostics

 

A comprehensive set of tests for your system

 

DIMM

 

Dual in-line memory module. See also memory module.

 

DIN

 

Deutsche Industrie Norm

 

directory

 

Directories help keep related files organized on a disk in a hierarchical, "inverted tree" structure. Each disk has a "root" directory. Additional directories that

branch off the root directory are called subdirectories. Subdirectories may contain additional directories branching off them.

 

DMA

 

Direct memory access. A DMA channel allows certain types of data transfer between RAM and a device to bypass the processor.