"The Atari A to Z" by Mark S Baines Copyright (c) 1998 Mark S Baines All Rights Reserved YOU MUST READ "READ_ME.NOW" BEFORE YOU LOOK AT ANY OF THIS FILE ***************************************************************************** W Wafer A very thin polished section of silicon crystal from which the silicon 'chips' of semiconductors are made. WAIS Wide Area Information Service. A powerful system for searching for information held in public databases across the Internet. Wait states Idle CPU clock cycles waiting for the data and instructions to come from slow RAM chips. This time can be lessened by a small fast static RAM cache for the CPU. With a ST with DRAM with an access time of 120 ns or less and an 8 MHz MC68000 there are no wait states, as each ST clock cycle is 125 ns long and most operations on a 68000 take four or more cycles to complete. All this means that ST DRAM is fast enough for the processor and that fitting DRAM chips faster than 120 ns makes no difference to the speed of the computer at all. Even on a 16 MHz Mega STE, the RAM is still accessed at 8 MHz and so slow memory can still be used. Waiting state The condition in which the instructions of an active program in a multiprogramming system are being ignored in preference to another program. Waiting time The time when a program or functional unit is in a waiting state. WAN Wide Area Network. Computers or terminals indirectly connected together over large distances usually using telecommunications links to form a network sharing some or all of the same resources, such as programs and data as well as disks, printers and even memory. Each computer or point of connection is called a node. Wand A hand-held input device to read bar codes or magnetic strips often used at point-of-sales terminals. Warm boot Making a computer system, which is already powered up, operational usually by loading the operating system. A warm boot implies that the system is not fully initialized as with a cold boot and that some system software is already present. On micros it often means a reset and re-boot. Wave A repeated variation in voltage, sound, light etc. that is capable of transferring energy between two points, such as a carrier wave. WD1772 The floppy disk controller chip used in the ST-Falcon made by Western Digital, derived from the FD1790 family and supplied in a 28-pin DIL package. It is only capable of controlling two floppy disk drives with either single-sided or double-sided double density disks with a capacity of around 720 K. The WD1772 provides all the signals for the control of a disk drive except for the drive and side select signals which come from the YM-2149 sound chip. When high density disks were introduced on the TT and Mega STE with TOS 2.06 and 3.06 the standard WD1772 was inadequate only being capable of handling a clock signal up to 12 MHz although some 02-02 types could handle 16 MHz. For high density and extra density disks, a clock signal of 16 MHz and 32 MHz is necessary and the WD1772 AJAX controller was designed for this purpose. See AJAX. Weight A value by which a digit is multiplied depending on its position in a number or string. In positional representation systems, such as decimal and binary, the weights of digits in adjacent positions differs by the amount of the radix or base. In the decimal number 27, the 2 has a weight of ten and the 7 a weight of one. In binary %101, the first leftmost 1 has a weight of four, the 0 a weight of two and the least significant 1 a weight of one. Weighting A value by which a digit is to be multiplied. Whetstone A unit of computer throughput. White noise Noise without a distinctive frequency pattern, such as with radio reception. Whitespace The characters included in a text file shown on screen that have no screen representation, such as the space and control characters. Also, in print, the amount of paper without type or graphics, as important to the layout of a page as the 'black' areas. WHY What Have You. Commonly used shorthand in e-mail and other messages. Might be seen in a message from a person wishing to part-exchange or swap something. Wide area network See WAN. Wildcards A single character entered into a command line string that may stand for one or more other characters when performing a search operation. Normally, the ? means any single character (or none) whilst a * stands for any number of different characters, for instance *.DOC would represent any file with the .DOC extender, whilst TEST_?.C would match TEST_1.C, TEST_A.C and TEST_.C but not TEST.C. WIMP Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pull-down menus. (Often interpreted as 'Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers'). A graphical user interface with windows and menus, predominately mouse controlled and characterized by the use of file dragging techniques and a 'Trash Can' for file deletion which particularly distinguish it from other GUI environments. The aim of a WIMP environment is to make the operation of a computer and a program as intuitive as possible to a user, using real-life analogies of working, such as dragging a file to a trash can to delete it. If programs are written to the guidelines of the WIMP system then all programs should be controlled and behave in a similar manner thus increasing the learning rate and productivity of a user. GEM, OS/2 v2, OS/2 WARP on the PC and the operating system front ends of the Apple Mac and Acorn Archimedes are true WIMP environments. It has been argued that Windows on the PC is not truly WIMP, lacking many WIMP traditional features should be classified as a GUI. Winchester An IBM originated name denoting a type of magnetic disk unit with one or more fixed hard disks with heads that land and take off from the disk surface and stored in a hermetically sealed case. Winchester disks are typically, the hard disks of microcomputers. See Hard disk. Window A period that has time significance for the occurrence of some event. In computer graphics, WIMP and some GUI environment systems, an area within a frame in which the output of a program is written and the user input takes place - a virtual screen or workstation for a program. Many windows can be present on the display screen at once, either all being active in a multitasking system, such as in MultiTOS or only the topmost in a singletasking system, such as TOS. Word A fixed number of bits that the computer hardware can transfer and manipulate as a unit within storage and the central processor, usually 8, 16, 24 or 32. The ST has a word length of sixteen being the width of the MC68000 data bus. The TT and Falcon030 have a word length of 32 bits. Also, a significant unit of a language usually delineated with spaces or punctuation marks. Word length The number of bits in a word, sixteen bits on a ST. Word processing The use of a computer program to assist in the preparation and printing of short-run printed documents. Typically, it allows the user to enter, manipulate, edit and print the text and store it for later retrieval and reference. Search and replace, margin justification, mail merge, spell checking, automatic page numbering, index and contents page generation, standard paragraphs and print control are some of the features of a word processor. Traditionally, a word processor uses a printer's own built-in fonts and styles and prints its document in text mode rather than the graphics mode associated with DTP. However, as word processing programs become more sophisticated and use many of the features of DTP programs, this distinction is increasingly becoming unclear and are better described as document processors. Word wrap A text editing function that automatically moves a word that crosses the text's right margin on to the next line so that the maximum line length is not exceeded and the word is not split (except by hyphenation). World Wide Web See WWW. Work area A unit of memory or disk space allocated to a program for the temporary storage of results, buffers and other processing needs. Work file A temporary disk file used by a program whilst running. A scratch file. Workstation A VDU terminal, often of a multi-user, multitasking system or local network where work is done. WORM Write Once, Read Many times. A term that refers to storage devices that can be written to only once. Some optical storage devices that use a laser to write data by permanently changing the specially coated surface of a disk or tape come into this category. WP Word Processing. WPM Words Per Minute. A measurement of typing speed. Write To place data in a particular location of computer storage. Also, to produce program source code. Write enable A signal that must be 'true' before a write operation can be performed, such as the switch within a floppy disk drive that detects whether the write- protect tab is open. Write head An electromagnetic element used to record data on a magnetizable surface medium. It is common to find the write and read heads combined into a single unit. Write inhibit A term applied to a signal, flag or device that prevents writing. Write-protect tab A hole or notch in a floppy disk which, when present and detected by the disk drive, prevents all write operations to it including file deletion. The hole on a 3.5 inch floppy disk is that at the bottom left-hand corner as inserted into the drive. Moving the tab so that the hole is closed enables the disk drive to write to the disk. Write verify When data is written to a disk it is verified by the operating system, that is, it is read back from the disk and checked against the original. As this operation takes time, it is a common practice to turn off this check when using disks thus speeding up their operation. Although generally safe to do so, it is not recommended with important data and poor quality disks and drives. WWW World Wide Web. A hypertext-based system used to explore the Internet and the information and resources contained therein. With suitable software a user can select a link which connects him to a remote system where that resource resides. The connections and searching for information and resources are done transparently to the user. The WWW developed from gopher type systems. See Internet, Gopher, WAIS. WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get. A term that refers to the ability of a program (such as in DTP) to closely represent on the screen what will be printed. The varying definitions of this principle and the differing resolutions between that of the screen and that of the printer make true WYSIWYG impossible with present technology, although the better systems come reasonably close. W 40 entries EOF