A570- The CD-ROM drive released by Commodore for the A500.

ACCELERATOR- An expansion that replaces your Amigas' CPU with a faster, better one.

ACCESS TIME- The time that it takes to read information from a disk.

AGA- Advanced Graphics Array, as well as Advanced Graphical Architecture. The standard graphics hardware found in the A1200 and A4000.

AGNUS- One of the early Amiga custom chips responsible for graphics. There have been different versions released called, Fat Agnus, Fatter Agnus and Super Fat Agnus.

AKIKO- The chip present in a CD³² that allowed 'Doom-style' games to run at a fast speed. It has so far been used very little, although it has been useful in Apple Mac emulation.

AMIGA- A powerful multitasking Operating System. It is also the Spanish word for "female friend".

AMIGADOS- This stands for Amiga Disk Operating System. It gives you control over hidden parts of your Amiga that cannot be accessed graphically through the Command Line Interface (CLI).

AMIGA KEY- The two keys on each side of the keyboard, next to ALT.

ANIM- A standard of storing animations on the Amiga, made popular by Electronic Arts DPaint.

ANSI- American National Standards Institute. The people responsible for approving standards. Also used to generally describe the type of graphics seen on teletext made up of different coloured blocks and text.

ANTI-ALIASING- A technique used by art packages to smooth jagged edges in images by mixing it with colours from the background.

API- Application Program Interface. A standard set of system calls that sits in between the application and the hardware, interpreting all messages and redirecting them to the required part.

APPLET- The name given to a program written in the Java programming language.

APPLICATION- A program that performs a specific task.

ARCHIVING- A system that saves files in a compressed state.

ARGUMENT- A parameter that is typed after a command or program name to enable or disable specific options. Also known as a template.

ARP- AmigaDOS Replacement Project. A project by Charlie Heath of Micro-smiths to create an improved set of CLI commands and libraries that the Workbench 1.3 functions.

ASCII- American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard code used for text files.

ASPECT RATIO- The proportion of an images' height to the width.

ASSIGN- An AmigaDOS command that redirects the system to look for files on a device to another directory.

ATTRIBUTES- A number of protection bits stored with each file. They can be examined by highlighting an icon and holding Right Amiga+I. To examine the attribute flags function click me

AUTO-CONFIG- The original plug and play! As usual it originated on Amiga. A system that automatically detects and configures hardware and memory so that it does not clash with other devices. Implemented in version 1.2 of the operating system.

AUTOEXEC.BAT- The PC equivalent to the Amigas Startup-Sequence. It tells the PC what software to run when the drive is booted.

AUTO PARKING- Many hard drives, particularly the 5.25 variety found on early PCs required "parking" to prevent the drive heads from being damaged when the machine was moved. Later models did this automatically when they were switched off.

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