Computer Fundamentals Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: Input, storage, manipulation and outputting of data

A computer is defined by the cycle it performs: it accepts data, stores it, manipulates it under the control of a program, and outputs the result. Fast arithmetic and repetitive accuracy are consequences of that ability, not the definition of it.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Digitizer

A digitizer converts information into digital form - a graphics tablet reporting the coordinates of a stylus, or a converter sampling an analogue signal into numbers. A modem converts between digital and analogue for transmission, and a mouse reports relative movement rather than digitising a source.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Auto index

An auto-index register is stepped automatically each time it is used, so successive references walk through consecutive elements of an array without a separate instruction to advance the pointer - the hardware behind auto-increment and auto-decrement addressing.

Answer: D

Correct answer: EuroNET

EuroNET was the packet-switching network built by the European Community in the late 1970s to link its member states’ research and information services, using the X.25 protocol. Ring, star and LAN describe network shapes and scopes rather than switching techniques.

Answer: B

Correct answer: 1950

Symbolic - assembly - languages appeared around 1950, when programmers began replacing raw binary operation codes with mnemonics and addresses with symbolic labels, and wrote assemblers to translate them. High-level languages such as FORTRAN followed later in the decade.

Answer: A

Correct answer: defines the fundamental method of determining effective operand addresses

The addressing structure of a machine is the set of rules by which an instruction’s address field is turned into the effective address of its operand - direct, indirect, indexed, base-relative, immediate. Addressing modes are the individual variations within that structure.

Answer: A

Correct answer: preemptive scheduling

Under preemptive scheduling the operating system may take the processor away from a process that is still perfectly able to run - when its time slice expires or a higher-priority process becomes ready - and give it to another. Non-preemptive scheduling lets a process keep the processor until it blocks or finishes.

Answer: A

Correct answer: have both their operands in the main store.

Storage-to-storage instructions take both operands from main memory and return the result there, without loading either into a register first - the form used for moving and comparing character strings. Register-to-storage and register-to-register instructions are the other two families.

Answer: C

Correct answer: pages out pages that have been least used recently

LRU - least recently used - evicts the page that has gone longest without being referenced, on the assumption that a page untouched for a long time is the least likely to be needed next. It approximates the optimal policy well, but tracking the order of use exactly is expensive, so it is usually approximated with reference bits.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Utility program

Merging the records of two files into one is routine housekeeping on data, and that is the province of a utility program - the sort, merge, copy and backup programs supplied with the system. Security and networking software serve other purposes entirely.