Guide to abbreviations

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Revision as of 03:21, 16 May 2006 by Jecel (talk | contribs) (reformatted the whole page to use the wiki definition format)
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Sometimes authors of text in a document in this wiki use an abbreviation without explaining what it means. The meaning of the abbreviation may be well-known to many readers yet unknown to some other readers.

The purpose of this page is to show the meanings of abbreviations which occur in pages of this wiki. Readers are asked not to include abbreviations which are not mentioned in at least one other page of the wiki. Readers are asked to maintain this as an alphabetically arranged list.


BIOS
Basic Input/Output System, which is a software system that resides in EPROM or Flash memory in PCs and takes care of booting the operating system and hiding the hardware details from it
CD
Compact Disc
CMOS
Complementary Metal-Oxide-Silicon, which is an integrated circuit manufacturing technology used in most current digital chips
CPU
the central processing unit of a computer or microcomputer
DNS
Domain Name System, which is how human readable names like "laptop.org" are translated into the IP addresses actually used by computers to talk to each other on the Internet
ECC
Error Checking and Correction, which adds bits to each memory word so things won't fail if cosmic radiation randomly changes a few bits. Low cost computers rarely have this
ESD
Electrostatic Discharge, which a person can generate when touching a metal object after, for example, walking on a carpet in a very dry environment. This little shock can be over 3000V and easily damage electronic circuits
I/O
Input/Output
ISP
an Information Service Provider which is an organization which allows, often for a fee, individuals to connect to the internet.
JFFS2
Journaling Flash File System, Version 2.
NAND
Not AND
OLPC
One Laptop per Child

http://www.laptop.org/

p2p
Peer to Peer, which is a network architecture in which all computers have the same functionality in contrast to a client/server system
PCI
peripheral component interconnect, a computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard.
USB
Universal Serial Bus