Glossary
National Instruments Corporation
G-5
VXI-MIO Series User Manual
default setting
A default parameter value recorded in the driver. In many cases,
the default input of a control is a certain value (often 0) that means
use the current default setting. For example, the default input for
a parameter may be do not change current setting, and the default
setting may be no AMUX-64T boards. If you do change the value
of such a parameter, the new value becomes the new setting. You
can set default settings for some parameters in the configuration
utility or by manually using switches located on the device.
device
(1) A plug-in data acquisition board, card, or pad that can contain
multiple channels and conversion devices. Plug-in boards,
PCMCIA cards, and devices such as the DAQPad-1200, which
connects to your computer parallel port, are all examples of DAQ
devices. (2) A component of a VXIbus system, normally one
VXIbus board. However, multiple-slot devices and multiple-
device modules can operate on a VXIbus system as a single
device. Some examples of devices are computers, multimeters,
multiplexers, oscillators, operator interfaces, and counters.
DGND
digital ground signal
DIFF
differential mode
differential input
An analog input consisting of two terminals, both of which are
isolated from computer ground, whose difference is measured.
DIO
digital input/output
dithering
The addition of Gaussian noise to an analog input signal.
DLL
Dynamic Link Library—A software module in Microsoft
Windows containing executable code and data that can be called
or used by Windows applications or by other DLLs. Functions and
data in a DLL are loaded and linked at run time when they are
referenced by a Windows application or other DLLs.
DMA
Direct Memory Access—A method by which data can be
transferred to/from computer memory from/to a device or
memory on the bus while the processor does something else.
DMA is the fastest method of transferring data to/from computer
memory.
DNL
differential nonlinearity—A measure in LSB of the worst-case
deviation of code widths from their ideal value of 1 LSB.
DRAM
Dynamic RAM
drivers/driver software
Software that controls a specific hardware device such as a DAQ
board.
