In laser printers, a rotating drum is coated with a photoelectric material that retains a charge when struck by a laser beam. The electrically charged spots on the drum then attract toner particles that the drum transfers to the paper as the paper passes by. Older operating systems, such as Windows 3.X and DOS, require the use of a boot utility to perform a dual boot. See also boot1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of floppy disk drives that can read from and write to disks in more than one density format.
Many personal computers use a second processor to perform floating-point mathematical operations.
See also coprocessor, floating-point notation. Compare smart quotes. A terminal that does not contain an internal microprocessor. Dumb terminals are typically capable of displaying only characters and numbers and responding to simple control codes. Compare smart terminal.