A strap, typically worn around the wrist, that connects the technician to ground and bleeds off any electrostatic charge.
What is an Anti-Static Wrist Strap?
100
The brain of the computer where most of the computer’s calculating takes place. Also called a microprocessor.
What is the Central Processing Unit (CPU)?
100
The component that supplies voltage to the CMOS chip. Without the battery, the information stored in the CMOS would be lost every time the computer is shut off.
What is a Battery?
100
A single binary unit of one or zero.
What is a Bit?
100
A system using a continuous, infinite range of values.
What is an Analog System?
200
Optional equipment used to input or output data.
What are Peripherals?
200
A fan that supplies a constant stream of air across the computer components.
What is the Cooling Fan?
200
Receptacles for expansion cards which allow them to connect to the motherboard’s circuitry.
What are Expansion Card Slots?
200
Equal to eight bits.
What is a Byte?
200
Information that can be presented in alpha/numeric form (such as ABC or 123), visual form (pictures), and audible form (like music or voices).
What is Data?
300
A release of energy (electrical current) created when an object with an electrostatic charge makes contact with a conductor.
What is Electrostatic Discharge (ESD)?
300
A magnetic storage device consisting of a set of magnetic disks and read/write heads housed inside a hard case.
What is the Hard Drive?
300
The chip that stores the BIOS Setup program data.
What is Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)?
300
The total amount of bytes a computer can process at one time.
What is a Word?
300
A system that uses discrete values.
What is a Digital System?
400
To plug in or unplug a device while the PC is running.
What is Hot Swap?
400
A board that can be easily installed in a computer to enhance or expand its capabilities.
What is an Expansion Card?
400
Special firmware that permits the compatibility between the CPU and devices such as the hard drive, CD-ROM drive, and monitor.
What is the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS)?
400
A system in which all numbers are expressed as combinations of 0 and 1. Also known as the base 2 number system.
What is the Binary Number System?
400
Side-by-side. In this type of transfer, more than one bit of data is transferred at a time.
What is Parallel processing?
500
A drive bay designed to accommodate the easy hot swap of devices such as hard disk drives, tape drives, CD-RW drives, and DVD drives.
What is Device Bay?
500
A volatile memory system into which programs are loaded. When the computer’s power is shut off, all data stored in RAM is lost.
What is Random Access Memory (RAM)?
500
A circuit board covered by a maze of conductors, which provide electrical current to the computer components and expansion slots. Also used to refer to the main circuit board and all of its electronic components (chipset).
What is the Motherboard?
500
A system in which all numbers are expressed in combinations of 16 alphanumeric characters (0–F). Also known as the base 16 number system.
What is the Hexadecimal Number System?
500
Occurring one at a time. In this type of transfer, data is transmitted one bit at a time.