Toshiba 8000 series, User Manual

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Part III: Appendixes
Glossary
237
board: Short for printed circuit board. A thin card containing chips and
other electronic components connected by metallic lines etched into
the surface. Most of the basic components of a computer, such as the
BIOS and memory are contained on one board, called the
motherboard. A computer usually contains additional boards that
provide specific functions beyond those of the motherboard.
boot: To start the computer. There are two types of boot. Turning on the
power with Resume Mode off is called a cold boot. Restarting the
computer by pressing
Ctrl
+
Alt
+
Del
or the restart button is called a
warm boot. The term boot originates from bootstrap program (as in
pulling itself up by its bootstraps), a program that loads and
initializes the operating system.
Boot Mode: The standard operating mode for most computers. In Boot
Mode, you must always save your work and exit the application
before you turn off the computer . When you turn on the computer
again, the computer performs its entire startup procedure, and you
have to restart your applications before you can continue working.
boot priority (startup sequence): The order in which the computer
accesses its disk drives to locate the startup files. Under the default
startup sequence, the computer looks for the startup files in the
floppy disk drive before checking the hard disk.
briefcase: A Windows 95 and NT feature that allows you to update
multiple versions of a file located on different computers.
buffer: An area of memory where information is held until it can be
processed. Buffers are frequently used to compensate for the fact
that some parts of the system are faster than others. For example, the
computer sends information to a printer many times faster than even
the fastest printer can handle it. A print buffer stores printer
information, enabling the computer to continue with other tasks. As
the printer prints a page, it looks in the buffer to see what to do next.
bus: An electrical circuit that connects the microprocessor with other
parts of the computer, such as the video adapter, disk drives and
ports. It is the highway along which data flows from one device to
another. See also
local bus .