Setup guide

Glossary–7
M
monospaced See font, monospaced.
N
NLQ Abbrev. for near letter quality.
NVRAM Abbrev. for nonvolatile random-access memory. A type of RAM
in which stored data are not lost when the power is interrupted or
turned off. A battery supplies power to NVRAM when the system
does not. Unlike ROM (another type of nonvolatile memory), the
contents of NVRAM can be altered.
See also RAM and ROM.
O
OCR Abbrev. for optical character recognition. A process by which a
machine can “read” characters printed in a special standardized
font. Data are read by a photoelectric optical scanner and can be
recorded on magnetic tape or disk. OCR-A and OCR-B are two
widely used OCR fonts.
P
parity (check) Parity checking is the addition of non-data bits to data, resulting
in the number of bits that are set to a “1” being either always even
or always odd. Parity is used to detect data errors.
PCBA Abbrev. for printed circuit board assembly.
pica A name indicating a monospaced font with a pitch of 10 cpi (and
usually 12 points in height). Pica is also used in typography as a
unit of measurement equal to 1/6 inch.
pitch The number of text characters printed per horizontal inch.
Specified in characters per inch (cpi).
See also cpi.