Common PC Glossary (Part 1)

• ANSI- American National Standards Institute. A non-governmental organization founded in 1918 to propose, modify, approve, and publish data processing standards for voluntary use in the United States.
• ASCII-American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard 7-bit code created in 1965 by Robert W. Bemer to achieve compatibility among various types of data processing equipment.
• Bad sector-A disk sector that cannot hold data reliably because of a media flaw.
• Boot record-A one-sector record that tells the computer's built-in operating system(BIOS) the most fundamental facts about a disk.Instructs the computer how to load the operating system files into memory, thus booting the machine.
• Boot- To lead a program into the computer. The term comes from the phrase "pulling a boot on by the bootstrap."
• Buffer- A block of memory used as a holding tank to store data temporarily. Often positioned between a slower peripheral device and the faster computer.
• Bug- An error or defect in a program
• Bus - A linear electrical signal pathway over which power, data and other signals travel.(Ex. Memory Bus, Address Bus)
• CMOS-Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor. A type of chip that requires little power to operate.(Ex: CMOS chip set of your motherboard)
• Crash-A malfunction that brings work to a halt. A system crash usually caused by a software malfuntion.A head crash, however, entails physical damage to a disk and probable data loss.
• CRC-Cyclic Redundancy Checking. An error-detection technique use to check integrity of data being sent or received.
• Defragmentation-The process of rearranging disk sectors so that files are stored on consecutive sectors in adjacent tracks.