N

native services

See system services.

NDIS

Network Driver Interface Specification. The interface for network drivers used in Windows and Windows NT/Windows 2000. NDIS provides transport independence for network vendors because all transport drivers call the NDIS interface to access the network.

nibble mode

An asynchronous, peripheral-to-host channel defined in the IEEE 1284-1944 standard. Provides a channel for the peripheral to send data to the host, which is commonly used as a means of identifying the peripheral.

NLS

National language support. A set of routines that give applications access to locale-specific information.

See also Unicode.

NMI

Nonmaskable interrupt. An interrupt that cannot be overruled by another service request. A hardware interrupt is called nonmaskable if it bypasses and takes priority over interrupt requests generated by software, the keyboard, and other devices.