Owner`s manual

Page B-3Glossary
ECHO A response by your terminal to what you press on the keyboard. If you
press a key (say the "a"), and you see a response on your terminal
screen (an "a" appears), then your terminal is in ECHO mode (the normal
way for it to be). Sometimes—for instance, when you are entering a
password, the terminal echoing can be turned off, so what you type goes
to the computer, but is not displayed on the screen.
FILE LOCKING A process by which a file being used by one program is "locked," so any
other program trying to access it will be told the file is in use. This
prevents problems occurring from two programs working on the same file
at the same time.
FILE
SPECIFICATION
Data on a disk is organized into logically-related groups called files.
Whenever you want to identify a file to an AMOS command, enter that
file’s specification, which includes its name, and where it is located, if
necessary.
INITIALIZATION The process of "starting up" something, whether it is the computer
system itself, or a part of the system, such as a print spooler or
AlphaVUE. The intialization allows you to customize the thing being
initialized to your particular needs.
INPUT Any data coming into the program or computer. Input may come from
the user at the keyboard, from a data file, or from some other external
device.
JOBS The system initialization command file defines to AMOS a "job" for each
terminal connected to the computer. AMOS then knows the
characteristics to be used with that terminal—how much memory to give
it, etc.
LOGICAL DEVICE A logical device is an abstraction. The computer cannot place or access
groups of data on a disk correctly unless it has a name for the disk, and
master and file directories of the contents of the disk available to it. So
while the physical disk may be a Winchester technology 400 Mb hard
disk to you, it is PLD0:, PLD1:, and PLD2: or the like to the computer. It
is important to remember the logical devices a disk system is configured
to have are only related to the physical disk drive. Exactly how the
logical devices are configured is up to you, within certain physical
limitations.
System Operator’s Guide to the System Initialization Command File, Rev. 03