M6Mi System Board Manual
ISA - An acronym for Industry Stan-
dard Architecture. A well-established
bus standard that originated with the
IBM AT. See
PCI, VESA Local Bus
and EISA.
Parallel - A form of data transmission
in which the data is sent one byte at a
time over several wires that each carry
one byte. In parallel transmission, all
the bytes arrive simultaneously, as op-
posed to serial transmission in which
bits arrive one by one.
Parallel Port - A connection for a
printer or similar peripheral. Gener-
ally, parallel ports are output only. See
Bidirectional Parallel Port and ECP.
PCI - An acronym for Peripheral
Component Interconnect. A high per-
formance 32-bit or 64-bit bus devel-
oped by Intel Corporation. PCI is de-
signed to be independent of the hard-
ware architecture to ensure compat-
ibility with future computer systems.
See
EISA, VESA Local Bus and ISA.
Pentium - A high performance 64-bit
CISC processor designed and manu-
factured by Intel Corporation. As of
this writing, Pentium is the highest
performing X86 processor available.
Plug and Play - A standard developed
to ensure easy installation of periph-
erals. Theoretically, a newly installed
card will automatically configure itself
and work properly without requiring
jumper configuration or device driv-
ers.
POST - An acronym for Power On
Self Test. A diagnostic program that
is run whenever the system is cold
booted.
RAM - An acronym for Random Ac-
cess Memory. A type of memory that
is used as the “working memory” of a
computer system. See DRAM and
SRAM.
ROM - An acronym for Read Only
Memory. A type of memory that re-
tains its data without requiring power.
Once written, it cannot be modified.
See EPROM and Flash ROM.
Serial - A type of data transmission
in which the data is sent one bit at a
time over a single wire. See Parallel.
Serial Port - A communications port
used to connect peripherals such as
modems and mice.
Setup - A program that allows you to
make changes to the system configu-
ration.
Shadow RAM - A technique used to
load a duplicate copy of BIOS from
slower ROM into faster RAM. This
enhances system performance be-
cause it provides higher access speed
to the BIOS.
SIMM - An acronym for Standard
Inline Memory Module. A small
printed circuit board containing
memory chips.
Glossary
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