A wire on a circuit board that connects two components or devices.
serial ATA (SATA)
An ATAPI cabling method that uses a narrower and more reliable cable than the 80–conductor cable. See also parallel ATA.
RAM (random access memory)
Memory modules on the motherboard containing microchips used to temporarily hold data and programs while the CPU processes both. Information in RAM is lost when the PC is turned off.
universal serial bus (USB) port
A type of port designed to make installation and configuration of I/O devices easy, providing room for as many as 127 devices daisy–chained together.
secondary storage
Storage that is remote to the CPU and permanently holds data, even when the PC is turned off, such as a hard drive.
system clock
A line on a bus that is dedicated to timing the activities of components connected to it. The system clock provides a continuous pulse that other devices use to time themselves.
serial port
A male 9–pin or 25–pin port on a computer system used by slower I/O devices such as a mouse or modem. Data travels serially, one bit at a time, through the port. Serial ports are sometimes configured as COM1, COM2, COM3, or COM4.
software
Computer programs, or instructions to perform a specific task. Software may be BIOS, OSs, or applications software such as a wordprocessing or spreadsheet program.
system bus
The bus between the CPU and memory on the motherboard. The bus frequency in documentation is called the system speed, such as 400 MHz. Also called the memory bus, front–side bus, local bus, or host bus.