marbles

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)

marbles
    n 1: a children's game played with little balls made of a hard
         substance (as glass)
    2: the basic human power of intelligent thought and perception;
       "he used his wits to get ahead"; "I was scared out of my
       wits"; "he still had all his marbles and was in full
       possession of a lively mind" [syn: {wits}, {marbles}]

from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

marbles \marbles\ n.
   A children's game played with marbles[3], little balls made
   of a hard substance (as glass).
   [WordNet 1.5]

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

marbles
 pl.n.

   [from mainstream "lost all his/her marbles"] The minimum needed to
   build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or abstractions.
   After a bad system crash, you need to determine if the machine has
   enough marbles to come up on its own, or enough marbles to allow a
   rebuild from backups, or if you need to rebuild from scratch. "This
   compiler doesn't even have enough marbles to compile {hello world}."

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

marbles

   <jargon> (From the mainstream "lost his marbles") The minimum
   needed to build your way further up some hierarchy of tools or
   abstractions.  After a bad system {crash}, you need to
   determine if the machine has enough marbles to come up on its
   own, or enough marbles to allow a rebuild from {backups}, or
   if you need to rebuild from scratch.  "This {compiler} doesn't
   even have enough marbles to compile {hello, world}."

   [{Jargon File}]

   (1998-05-21)