4
Glossary
AT bus
The AT bus system with support chips (DMA, PIC, etc) and a
16-bit bus slot. The AT bus is strictly defined by ISA.
audio
Relating to or capable of producing sound. Multimedia
computers make extensive use of audio.
AVI
A digital movie format created by Microsoft. AVI is short for
“audio/video interleave,” a method of including a digital movie
and its accompanying sound in the same file. Files in the AVI
format have the .AVI extension.
B
bad sector
Part of a hard drive or diskette drive storage medium that
doesn’t hold data. Formatting generally detects and marks
these areas so they won’t be used. Certain utility programs do,
too, and it is a good idea to run this type of utility occasionally
to prevent data loss if the condition of the drive changes.
bandwidth
A measure of how much information something can carry.
Specifically, data path times frequency. For example, the ISA
bus has a data path of 16 bits (it can send 16 bits at a time) and
typically operates at 8.33 MHz, so it has a bandwidth of 133.28
megabits per second (Mbps).
base RAM
Area of system memory between 0 and 640 kilobytes available
to the user for operating system and application programs.
