Computer Fundamentals Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: compaction does not involve relocation of programs

Compaction moves all the occupied blocks of memory to one end so that the free space collects into a single usable hole - and moving a program necessarily means relocating its addresses. So the statement that compaction does not involve relocation is the false one. The other three are true: it is also called garbage collection, and the system must halt while it runs.

Answer: D

Correct answer: allows processes to synchronize activity

Interprocess communication exists so that separate processes can exchange information and coordinate - through pipes, message queues, shared memory and semaphores - letting one wait for another to finish a stage. It is not needed by every process, and it uses kernel mechanisms rather than disk drives.

Answer: A

Correct answer: is the hardware necessary to implement paging

Dynamic address translation is the hardware - the memory management unit, with its page table and translation lookaside buffer - that converts each virtual address into a physical one as the instruction executes. Without it paging could not work, because every reference would have to be translated in software.

Answer: C

Correct answer: can be temporarily removed by compaction

Fragmentation leaves a file’s blocks scattered across the disk, so compaction (defragmentation) rewrites them contiguously and gathers the free space together. The relief is temporary: continued creation and deletion of files fragments the disk again.

Answer: A

Correct answer: cannot be made to execute in any area of storage other than the one designated for it

A non-relocatable program has its absolute addresses fixed when it is written or assembled, so it will only run at the one place in memory it was written for. A relocatable program carries the information a loader needs to adjust those addresses and can be placed wherever there is room.

Answer: D

Correct answer: All of the above

A language processor is any program that translates or executes another program written in a programming language: an assembler for assembly language, a compiler that translates a high-level program wholesale, and an interpreter that executes it statement by statement.

Answer: C

Correct answer: auto increment

In auto-increment addressing the register named in the instruction supplies the effective address, and once the operand has been fetched the register is stepped on to point to the next item. It is what makes walking through an array or a stack a single instruction.

Answer: A

Correct answer: segmentation

Segmentation allocates each segment a contiguous block of exactly the size it needs, so as segments come and go the free memory is left as scattered holes - enough in total but no single hole large enough. That is external fragmentation. Paging uses fixed-size frames, so it suffers internal fragmentation instead.

Answer: B

Correct answer: COPY

COPY takes a named file (or a group matched by wildcards) and writes it to another disk or directory. DISKCOPY duplicates a whole diskette track by track, RENAME only changes a name, and FORMAT erases the disk and prepares it for use.

Answer: D

Correct answer: OZ

The MacLite portable ran an operating system called OZ. Despite the name it was unrelated to the Apple Macintosh, and it ran neither DOS nor Windows.