AmiTCP - currently the most widely used TCP/IP stack for the Amiga. Was originally freely available up to version 3, from version 4 it is only available as a commercial product

AppIcon - introduced with Workbench 2, an AppIcon is an interface to a program, or an Application's Icon. When you run a program it can place a new icon on the Workbench in to which you can drop files that will then be loaded straight into the program

Archive - an archive refers to a number of files that have to be collected into one file which is then normally compressed. This makes transmitting many files a lot easier

AS225r2 - the TCP/IP stack written by Commodore, apparently better than AmiTCP. Unfortunately it never received a public release, only being available to developers. It will make an appearance with the soon-to-appear Amiga Tech Internet package

Bytes - one byte is made up of 8-bits, a bit is either 1 or 0. A single byte can hold any value from 0 to 255

C++ - An extension to the normal C language that gives it object-oriented abilities, allowing functions to share and inherit abilities from other functions
CISC - Complex Instruction Set Computer, basically designed to make writing programs as simple as possible by putting the complexity in the processors command set and not the compiler

Datatypes - a system standard that allows any program that supports them to load any installed Datatype file. So a program that supports picture Datatypes can load ILBM, GIF, Jpeg and any other picture Datatype you have installed

Device Driver - a special piece of code that lets the operating system access new devices and filesystems, such as PC/Mac/Zip disks

DPI - Dots Per Inch, a way of measuring the quality of a display or print out. The higher the DPI the greater the quality, as there are more dots for each inch. A monitor has about 75 DPI, a half decent printer is at least 300 DPI, and magazines are around 1200 DPI

FastRAM - so called FastRAM on the Amiga is memory that cannot be accessed by the custom chip. Because of this the processor has unrestricted access and program can be run faster from 'fast' RAM than from 'chip' RAM, as there is no access conflicts with the custom chips

FPU - Floating Point Unit, a specialised chip or part of a chip that is dedicated to calculating Floating Point equations. Floating point numbers allow computers to store very large and very small numbers, which they could not do easily otherwise

Gb - a Gigabyte or a 1000 million bytes

HD - when connected with floppy disks it means high density. These disks can store twice the amount of data than a normal DD or double density disk, but you need a HD disk drive to read them

IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics, the hard drive interface found on A600, A1200 and A4000. The cheapest way to get a hard drive connected to a computer

KHz - refers to how many times a second a sample should be taken. So a 16-bit 40KHz sample will take 40,000 16-bit samples a second Library - part of the Amiga operating system, libraries allow AmigaDOS to be extendible, so if you want to add new functions you just add new libraries

Mb - Stands for a megabyte or a million bytes. A standard A1200 has a 2Mb memory so has 2 million bytes.

Mode promotion - when the AGA chip set came out Amiga owners suddenly had access to high resolution VGA monitor modes. Unfortunately no programs supported these, so mode promotion was invented to force these programs to use the best VGA monitor mode available, which you select it from your IControl preferences

Partition - when a hard drive is 'split' into sections these individual sections are called partitions and appear to be independent drives

PCMCIA - that thin slot on the side of an A1200 and A600, know to be known as a PC slot, as everyone got really ticked of having to say PCMCIA slot all the time

PC slot - also known as the PCMCIA slot, this is a interface standard mainly used on portable machines

PD - Public Domain software is referred to as PD. Any software that is entirely in the public domain can be copied and used by anyone, but there are normally restriction imposed by the writer of the software

RISC - Reduced Instruction Set Computer, a design methodology that makes the processor as fast as possible by streamlining the execution path. The first step is to use only the most essential commands, so reducing the number used

Rom - Read Only Memory, refers to part of the computerÕs memory that can only be read from and not written to, compared to RAM that can be both written and read from

Root - directories are said to be ordered in a tree fashion, with directories existing in other directors and so on. The top of this tree is called the root directory. So RAM: is the root of the RAM directory

SCSI - Small Computer Systems Interface, a more complex interface than IDE allowing all manner of peripherals to be connected to it, and as many as seven devices

TCP/IP - the software that allows you to connect to the Internet and other networks