Tutorial

Answer all questions

1. Which component of the motherboard chipset is responsible for managing high-speed

peripheral communications?[1]
2. Which type of memory is directly accessed by the CPU?[2]
3. Differentiate the CPU clock speed and CPU size.[2]
4. What is the name of the boot routine that verifies the size and integrity of the system
memory?[1]
5. Which CPU technology allows for the assignment of two logical cores for every physical core
present?[1]
6. Which motherboard form factor is common in desktop computers and measures 12″ × 9.6″?
[1]
7. The set of signal pathways on a motherboard between the CPU and RAM is called what?[1]
8. A technician needs to install a new hard drive for a client. Access speed is far more
important to this client than disk space. What type of hard drive is best suited for this
client?[1]
9. You have a computer running Windows 8. Every time you boot, the computer insists on
trying to boot from the DVDROM drive. Where can you change the setting to have the
system boot to the hard drive first?[1]
10. A software reports that there is too much memory usage in a device and suggests some
applications to close to free up some memory. What type of software is this?[1]
11. Discuss the two methods used to access data on a storage device, the advantages and/or
disadvantages of each of the methods.[4]
12. Distinguish between open source and freeware giving one advantage of each.[4]
13. Distinguish between virtualization and virtual memory.[4]
14. Explain the difference between multitasking and multiprocessing.[2]
15. How does a synchronous dynamic RAM differ from a standard dynamic RAM?[2]
16. Mike has a 64-bit computer, which runs a 32-bit Windows 7 OS version. He has a copy of 64-
bit Microsoft Office that he intends installing to the computer. Will he be able to install the
Microsoft Office software? Why?[4]
17. You have an Android phone and it is running slowly. It seems to be isolated to one app in
particular. You check and you have plenty of free memory. You have rebooted the phone
several times and the app is still slow. What should you try next?[1]
18. What are the 5 main characteristics that qualify a device to be called a computer?[5]
19. My laptop’s time and date keeps resetting to January 1, 2048. What is the most likely
cause?[1]
20. During the POST process, a single short beep is heard. What does the beep mean?[1]
21. Which storage technology is used by hard disk drives?[1]
22. Which type of cache memory is shared by all cores of a CPU?[1]
23. A technician has just replaced a faulty hard drive and created a partition on the new drive.
Which utility should she use next to ready the drive for data storage?[1]
24. You just installed Microsoft Windows to a computer with three internal SATA hard drives
and one external USB hard drive. SATA hard drive 1 contains the operating system. SATA
hard drive 2 contains the user profiles. SATA hard drive 3 and the external USB flash drive
are empty. Where should you place the page file to maximize performance? Why?[3]

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CSC121 TEST 1 Practice Qs
 25. State 4 improvements that came with the introduction of the 3rd generation of
computers.[4]
26. Describe the instruction cycle.[4]
27. What is hardware independence?[2]
28. Describe the System Restore program and how it works.[6]

29. What are the differences between first generation computers and fourth generation
computers? [4]
30. Which access method is used to access data from a solid-state storage device? [1]
31. Explain the advantages/ disadvantages of the access method in 4 above. [2]
32. The AGP slots are a direct connection for video circuitry. A computer technician wants to
install a graphics cards to a computer. He opens it up and discovers that the motherboard
has PCI express slots only. Advice the technician on what to do. Explain why you would give
that advice. [3]
33. Explain how a double data rate SDRAM achieves the double data rate at the same clock
speed. [2]
34. State the disadvantage of using beep codes as a troubleshooting measure? [2]
35. The chipset on a motherboard are divided into two. Give the difference between the two
chipsets. [2]
36. How much capacity does one need to store 5 characters in a computer? [1]
37. What text does the following binary code represent? [4] 010001100110000101110100
38. Explain the concept of hyperthreading. How does it differ from multicore?
39. What is pipelining? [2]
40. Why does a static RAM require frequent refreshing? [2]
41. What is the difference between PCI and PCI-express slots? [1]
42. What are the design considerations of the BTX motherboard form factor that make it better
than the ATX form factor? [4]
43.

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CSC121 TEST 1 Practice Qs