Users Guide

Glossary 165
bootable diskette
You can start your system from a diskette. To make a bootable diskette, insert a
diskette in the diskette drive, type
sys a: at the command line prompt, and
press <Enter>. Use this bootable diskette if your system will not boot from the
hard drive.
bpi
Abbreviation for bits per inch.
bps
Abbreviation for bits per second.
BTU
Abbreviation for British thermal unit.
bus
An information pathway between the components of a system. Your system
contains an expansion bus that allows the microprocessor to communicate with
controllers for all the various peripheral devices connected to the system. Your
system also contains an address bus and a data bus for communications between
the microprocessor and RAM.
CA
Abbreviation for certification authority.
cache
A fast storage area that keeps a copy of data or instructions for quicker data
retrieval. For example, your system's BIOS may cache ROM code in faster RAM.
Or, a disk-cache utility may reserve RAM in which to store frequently accessed
information from your system's disk drives; when a program makes a request to a
disk drive for data that is in the cache, the disk-cache utility can retrieve the data
from RAM faster than from the disk drive.
capability
Refers to the actions that an object can perform, or actions that can be taken on
a managed object. For example, if a card is hot-pluggable, it is capable of being
replaced while the system power is on.
CDRAM
Abbreviation for cached DRAM, which is a high-speed DRAM memory chip
developed by Mitsubishi that includes a small SRAM cache.
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