'> Glossary





AMLCD
An acronym for Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display. A specific style of flat panel display technology.
ASIC
An acronym for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. A silicon chip designed to implement functions that would otherwise require several chips or parts.
boot
To load the system software into memory and start it running.
boot PROM
In Sun workstations, contains the PROM monitor program, a command interpreter used for booting, resetting, low-level configuration, and simple test procedures.
DBRI
An acronym for Dual Basic Rate Interface. A Sun designed ASIC that implements the hardware end of an ISDN interface.
default
A preset value that is assumed to be correct unless changed by the user.
Desktop Storage Module
An external data storage that contains a disk drive or a tape drive. Abbreviated as DSM.
Desktop Storage Pack
An external data storage unit that contains a disk drive (Desktop Disk Pack), a tape drive (Desktop Backup Pack), or a CD-ROM drive (Desktop SunCD Pack), and that can be connected to a SPARCstation Voyager workstation. Abbreviated as DSP.
Ethernet
A type of network hardware that allows communication between systems connected directly together by transceiver taps, transceiver cables, and a coaxial cable. Implemented in the SPARCstation Voyager workstation using twisted-pair telecommunications wire and cable.
External Storage Module
An external unit that contains disk/tape drives and that can be connected to a SPARCstation Voyager workstation. Abbreviated as ESM.
ISDN
An acronym for Integrated Services Digital Network. A technical standard that provides for fully digital transmission and reception of data, and fully digital end-to-end connectivity of telecommunications devices across a public network.
Memory Card
A small board which usually contains several DRAMs. These cards are added to a system to increase the amount of memory available to the CPU.
NVRAM
An acronym for non-volatile random access memory. The NVRAM is used to store system variables used by the boot PROM. It also contains the system's hostid number and Ethernet address.
PCMCIA
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association is an international organization that has defined interface standards for Personal Computer Cards. These PC Cards add memory, mass storage and I/O capabilities to mobile computing systems. You can use a Sun modem contained on a PCMCIA card on your SPARCstation Voyager workstation.
point-to-point protocol (PPP)
The successor to SLIP, PPP provides router-to-router and host-to-network connections over both synchronous and asynchronous circuits.
power management
The regulation of a computer's power consumption.
Resume
Turning the power on after a suspend. The resume operation restores the system to the point at which it was suspended.
SCSI Small Computer System Interface; pronounced "scuzzy."
SLAVIO
This chip contains all of the control logic referred to as slave I/O devices. These devices are serial ports, floppy controller, EPROM, TOD chip and NVRAM.
suspend
A means of turning off the power in which the system state is saved to disk. See also resume.
system
Any computer that allows you to run programs or applications. In this book, it means the SPARCstation Voyager workstation unit together with the Sun operating system and peripheral hardware devices.
system unit
The enclosure containing the system memory, central processing unit, hard disk, floppy drive, and video board.
TOD
An acronym of Time of Day. This is a special timekeeping chip that keeps track of what day and time it is.