| Term |
Description |
Power
Supply |
The
box inside your computer that supplies the electricity your
computer needs. The Power Supply converts the house AC current
to voltages the computer can use, 3.3, 5, and 12 volts DC. |
Partition |
A
division of a hard drive. Each division is capable of containing
1 or more logical drives. Even if you're not going to divide
a hard drive up, it still must be partitioned. Partitioning
creates the Master Boot Record. |
Partition
Table |
A
type of video display (originally for notebook and laptop
computers) that uses a series of criss-crossed wires with
an LCD element at each intersection to produce a picture.
Each element represents a pixel and can either allow light
to pass or not. In contrast, an active-matrix display has
a single transistor to represent each picture element (pixel).
Passive-matrix displays are cheaper to produce but can't produce
as sharp a picture as an active-matrix display. |
Path
Name |
The
filing system on a computer is a hierarchical system. The
Path Name for a certain file indicates to the computer, or
the user, the drive and list of directories (folders) that
must be followed to find that file. This is the path needed
to access, retrieve or save the file. The path D:\GAMES\WIPEOUT\WIPEOUT.EXE
indicates that the file WIPEOUT.EXE, needed to start this
game, is in a directory or folder called WIPEOUT, which is
in a folder called GAMES, which is on the D: drive. |
PCI |
Peripheral
Component Interconnect. The PCI bus is a local bus that supports
both 32 and 64-bit data paths. It has a 33 MHz bus speed and
is processor independent (communicates with the processor
through a bridge circuit). Most PCI expansion cards are Plug
and Play. |
PGA |
Pin
Grid Array. A type of socket for a Central Processing Unit.
The PGA Socket has all its pins lined up in even rows, as
opposed to the SPGA Socket which has its rows staggered. |
Port |
A
port is a socket or plug-in on your computer that allows you
to attach an external device by connecting its cable. |
Pixel |
Pixel
is a contraction for Picture Element. Everything on your computer
screen is made up of thousands of tiny little dots. Each dot
is called a pixel. The more pixels used to draw your screen,
the higher the resolution. A resolution of 1024x768 means
that your monitor is using 1024 pixels across your screen
and 768 pixels down. This is a total of 786,432 pixels used
to display the image |
Parity |
A
method of error checking memory in which a ninth bit is added.
A computer may use Even Parity or Odd Parity. Using Even Parity,
when data is put into memory, each byte is examined to determine
the number of 1s. If the number of 1st in the byte are even,
then a zero (0) would be put in the ninth bit. If the number
of 1s in the byte are odd, then a one (1) would be put in
the ninth bit to make the number even. So every byte in memory
should have an even number of 1s. If a byte is found to have
an odd number, then a parity error is displayed. The opposite
holds true for Odd Parity.
|
