A wire on a circuit board that connects two components or devices.
system BIOS
BIOS located on the motherboard.
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.
solid state drive (SSD)
A hard drive that has no moving parts. Also see solid state device (SSD).
serial ATA (SATA)
An ATAPI cabling method that uses a narrower and more reliable cable than the 80–conductor cable. See also parallel ATA.
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.
startup BIOS
Part of system BIOS that is responsible for controlling the PC when it is first turned on. Startup BIOS gives control over to the OS once it is loaded.
volatile
Refers to a kind of RAM that is temporary, cannot hold data very long, and must be frequently refreshed.
video card
An interface card installed in the computer to control visual output on a monitor. Also called display adapter or graphics card.
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.
