176 Glossaryexpansion bus — Your system contains an expansion bus that allows the processor tocommunicate with controllers for peripherals, such as NICs.expansion card — An add-in card, such as a NIC or SCSI adapter, that plugs into anexpansion-card connector on the system board. An expansion card adds somespecialized function to the system by providing an interface between the expansionbus and a peripheral.expansion-card connector — A connector on the system board or riser board forplugging in an expansion card.F — Fahrenheit.FAT — File allocation table. The file system structure used by MS-DOS to organizeand keep track of file storage. The Microsoft® Windows® operating systems canoptionally use a FAT file system structure.flash memory — A type of EEPROM chip that can be reprogrammed from a utility ondiskette while still installed in a system; most EEPROM chips can only be rewrittenwith special programming equipment.format — To prepare a hard drive or diskette for storing files. An unconditional formatdeletes all data stored on the disk.FSB — Front-side bus. The FSB is the data path and physical interface between theprocessor and the main memory (RAM).ft — Feet.FTP — File transfer protocol.g — Gram(s).G — Gravities.Gb — Gigabit(s); 1024 megabits or 1,073,741,824 bits.GB — Gigabyte(s); 1024 megabytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes. However, when referringto hard-drive capacity, the term is usually rounded to 1,000,000,000 bytes.graphics mode — A video mode that can be defined as x horizontal by y vertical pixelsby z colors.group — As it relates to DMI, a group is a data structure that defines commoninformation, or attributes, about a manageable component.guarding — A type of data redundancy in which a set of physical drives stores data andan additional drive stores parity data. See also mirroring, striping, and RAID.h — Hexadecimal. A base-16 numbering system, often used in programming toidentify addresses in the system’s RAM and I/O memory addresses for devices. In text,hexadecimal numbers are often followed by h.
