UPGRADING REPAIRING PCs

Glossary of Essential Terms 7
Table 1.3 Terms and Their Definitions Continued
Term Definition
HomePNA Home Phoneline Networking Alliance; a trade group that develops
standards for networking over telephone lines within a home or small
office.
Host-based A type of printer in which the computer processes the image data;
these printers are cheaper but less versatile than those containing a
page-description or printer command language.
Hub Device that accepts multiple connections, such as USB, 10BASE-T, and
10/100 or Fast Ethernet hubs.
I/O port Input/output port; used to communicate to and from motherboard or
add-on devices. All devices require one or more I/O port address
ranges, which must be unique to each device.
ICS Internet connection sharing; a feature on Windows 98SE, Windows
2000, and Windows Me that enables one computer to share its
Internet connection with other Windows computers, including Win95
and Win98 original versions.
IDE Integrated Drive Electronics; also called AT Attachment. The 40-pin
interface used on most hard drives, CD-ROMs, and internal versions of
LS-120 SuperDisk and Iomega Zip drives. Drives must be jumpered as
master, slave, or single.
IEEE-1284 A series of parallel-port standards that include EPP and ECP high-speed
bi-directional modes.
IEEE-1394 Also called i.Link and FireWire; a very high-speed, direct-connect
interface for high-performance storage, digital video editing, and scanning
devices.
IPX/SPX Standard protocols used on NetWare 3.x/4.x networks.
IRQ Interrupt request line; used by devices to request attention from the CPU.
ISA Industry Standard Architecture; a slot standard developed by IBM in
1981 for 8-bit cards; enhanced by IBM in 1984 for 16-bit cards; now
obsolete, although most systems have one or two on board.
KDE K Desktop Environment; a popular GUI for Linux.
LAN Local area network.
LBA Logical block addressing; a BIOS-based method of remapping the normal
drive geometry to overcome the 504-megabyte/528.5-millionbyte
limit imposed by normal IDE drive designs. Can also be
implemented by add-on cards or software drivers.
LCD Liquid crystal display; flat-panel display technology used on notebook
and advanced desktop computers.
Legacy Non plug-and-play (PnP) card; also can refer to serial and parallel ports.
Local Bus A series of high-speed slot standards (VL-Bus, PCI, and AGP) for video
that bypass the slow ISA bus.
Loopback A method of testing ports that involves sending data out and receiving
data back through the same port; implemented with loopback plugs
that loop send lines back to receive lines.
LPT Line printer port; also called parallel port.
LS-120 Also called SuperDisk; a 3.5'' drive and disk made by Imation (originally
3M) with 120MB capacity. Drive can also read/write/format standard
1.44MB 3.5'' media.