peripheral

adj 1: of or relating to or of the nature of a periphery;

"peripheral vision"

2: on or near an edge or constituting an outer boundary;

"russia's peripheral provinces"; "peripheral vision" [ant:

{central}]

3: not of central importance; "energy is far from a peripheral

issue in the economy"

n : (computer science) devices connected by cable to the CPU of

a computer; "disk drives and printers are important

peripherals" [syn: {computer peripheral}, {peripheral

device}]

peripheral

(Or "peripheral device", "device") Any part of a

computer other than the {CPU} or {working memory},

i.e. {disks}, {keyboards}, {monitors}, {mice}, {printers},

{scanners}, {tape drives}, {microphones}, {speakers},

{cameras}, to list just the less exotic ones.

High speed working {memory}, such as {RAM}, {ROM} or, in the

old days, {core} would not normally be referred to as

peripherals. The more modern term "device" is also more

general in that it is used for things such as a {pseudo-tty},

a {RAM drive} or a {network adaptor}.

(1999-02-10)