Input and Output Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Correct answer: Striping

Striping divides a file into blocks and writes consecutive blocks to different disks, so several drives transfer at once and the effective throughput multiplies.

The cost is reliability: with the data spread across every disk, the failure of any one of them loses the file, so striping alone - RAID 0 - is less reliable than a single drive. Combining it with mirroring or parity restores redundancy, which is what the higher RAID levels do.

Answer: D

Correct answer: 6 -6 0 1

Work left to right with the short-circuit rules. ++a makes a 6, which is non-zero and therefore true; ++b makes b −6, also non-zero and true, so the && yields 1.

The || then has a true left operand, so it short-circuits: ++c is never evaluated and c stays 0. The result d is 1. The trap is −6, which is true because it is non-zero - truth in C is non-zero, not positive.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Video Card

A CRT is driven by an analogue signal, and the video card is what produces it: the frame buffer holds digital pixel values and a digital-to-analogue converter turns them into the varying voltages that control the beam intensity.

That conversion is why the classic VGA connector carries analogue signals. Flat panels are digital devices, so DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort omit the conversion and send the pixel values directly - a change of interface following from a change of display technology.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Drum

A drum printer carries a cylinder engraved with a complete set of characters in a band for every print position. The drum spins continuously and a hammer strikes the paper as the wanted character passes, so a whole line is committed in one revolution.

That is what makes it a line printer with a fixed character set: nothing can be printed that is not engraved on the drum, so graphics are impossible. The speed was the attraction, and impact printing let it produce multi-part forms.

Answer: D

Correct answer: View or print data

Output devices present results: the monitor displays them and the printer puts them on paper. Entering, storing and scanning are the work of input and storage devices.

Answer: C

Correct answer: resolution

Resolution is the number of pixels the screen displays, so a higher count packs more detail into the same area. Refresh rate governs how smoothly motion appears and colour depth how many shades can be shown, neither of which is sharpness.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Storage

A storage bay, or drive bay, is a standard-sized opening in the system case into which a drive is fitted - a hard disk, a solid state drive or an optical drive.

The standardisation is the point: bays come in defined sizes, historically 3.5 and 5.25 inches, so that drives from any manufacturer fit any case. The term describes the space and its mountings rather than any device, which is why it is named for the class of hardware it accommodates.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Digital Camera

A digital camera focuses the image onto a sensor array, which converts light into charge and then into digital values, so what it captures is already in the form the computer needs.

A film camera captures an image too, but chemically, and it must be developed and then scanned before a computer can use it. A memory card only stores what the camera produced, and an indicator LED on the case captures nothing at all.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Fax machine

Facsimile means "an exact copy", and the machine sends one over a telephone line: it scans a page into a signal, transmits it, and the receiving machine prints it back out.

So a fax machine is a scanner and a printer combined with a modem, which is why it is sometimes described as either - but the term for the whole is the fax machine, and the whole is more than either half. Its function is transmission, which neither a scanner nor a printer performs.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Speech Synthesizers

A speech synthesiser converts text into audible speech, so it is an output device - the counterpart of speech recognition, which converts speech into text and is an input function.

Modern systems work by concatenating recorded fragments or by generating the waveform from a model, and the difficulty is prosody rather than pronunciation: producing the rhythm and intonation that make a sentence sound natural rather than a string of correctly pronounced words.