Dell PowerEdge 2500SC - Manual (Page 40)

Abbreviation for British thermal unit.
bus
An information pathway between the components of a system. Your system contains an expansion bus that allows the microprocessor to communicate with controllers
for all the various peripheral devices connected to the system. Your system also contains an address bus and a data bus for communications between the
microprocessor and RAM.
byte
Eight contiguous bits of information, the basic data unit used by your system.
C
Abbreviation for Celsius.
cache
A fast storage area that keeps a copy of data or instructions for quicker data retrieval. For example, your system's BIOS may cache ROM code in faster RAM. Or, a
disk-cache utility may reserve RAM in which to store frequently accessed information from your system's disk drives; when a program makes a request to a disk drive
for data that is in the cache, the disk-cache utility can retrieve the data from RAM faster than from the disk drive.
card-edge connector
The metal-contact section on the bottom of an expansion card that plugs into an expansion-card connector.
CD-ROM
Abbreviation for compact disc read-only memory. CD-ROM drives use optical technology to read data from CDs. CDs are read-only storage devices; you cannot
write new data to a CD with standard CD-ROM drives.
COMn
The device names for the first through fourth serial ports on your system are COM1, COM2, COM3, and COM4. The default interrupt for COM1 and COM3 is
IRQ4, and the default interrupt for COM2 and COM4 is IRQ3. Therefore, you must be careful when configuring software that runs a serial device so that you don't
create an interrupt conflict.
component
As they relate to DMI, manageable components are operating systems, computer systems, expansion cards, or peripherals that are compatible with DMI. Each
component is made up of groups and attributes that are defined as relevant to that component.
controller
A chip that controls the transfer of data between the microprocessor and memory or between the micro-processor and a peripheral device such as a disk drive or the
keyboard.
control panel
The part of the system that contains indicators and controls, such as the power switch, hard-disk drive access indicator, and power indicator.
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 microprocessor of specific processing tasks. A math coprocessor, for example, handles numeric processing. A graphics coprocessor
handles video rendering. The Intel ® Pentium ® micro-processor, for example, includes a built-in math coprocessor.
cpi
Abbreviation for characters per inch.
CPU
Abbreviation for central processing unit. See also microprocessor.
dB
Abbreviation for decibel(s).
dBA