TYAN TOMCAT I7230B Manual page 80

IDE (Integrated Device/Drive Electronics): a simple, self-contained HDD
interface. It can handle drives up to 8.4 GB in size. Almost all IDEs sold now are
in fact Enhanced IDEs (EIDEs), with maximum capacity determined by the
hardware controller.
IDE INT (IDE Interrupt): a hardware interrupt signal that goes to the IDE.
I/O (Input/Output): the connection between your computer and another piece
of hardware (mouse, keyboard, etc.)
Initial Program Load (IPL): a feature built into BBS-compliant devices,
describing those devices as capable of loading and executing an OS, as well as
being able to provide control back to the BIOS if the loading attempt fails.
IPL: see Initial Program Load.
IRQ (Interrupt Request): an electronic request that runs from a hardware
device to the CPU. The interrupt controller assigns priorities to incoming
requests and delivers them to the CPU. It is important that there is only one
device hooked up to each IRQ line; doubling up devices on IRQ lines can lock
up your system. Plug-n-Play operating systems can take care of these details
for you.
ISA (Industry Standard Architecture): a slower 8- or 16-bit bus (data
pathway).
Latency: the amount of time that one part of a system spends waiting for
another part to catch up. This is most common when the system sends data out
to a peripheral device, and it waiting for the peripheral to send some data back
(peripherals tend to be slower than onboard system components).
Mirroring: see RAID.
NVRAM: ROM and EEPROM are both examples of Non-Volatile RAM, memory
that holds its data without power. DRAM, in contrast, is volatile.
OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers): Compaq or IBM package other
companies' motherboards and hardware inside their case and sell them.
Parallel port: transmits the bits of a byte on eight different wires at the same
time (that is, in parallel form, eight bits at the same time).
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect): a 32 or 64-bit local bus (data
pathway) which is faster than the ISA bus. Local buses are those which operate
within a single system (as opposed to a network bus, which connects multiple
systems).
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