Computer Fundamentals Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Correct answer: CPU

The central processing unit fetches each instruction, decodes it, performs the arithmetic and logic, and directs every other unit - so it is the part that does the thinking, and is called the brain of the machine. The ALU and the control unit are components within the CPU, and memory only holds what the CPU works on.

Answer: B

Correct answer: L

Hexadecimal is base 16, so it needs sixteen digits: 0 to 9 for the first ten values and then A, B, C, D, E and F for ten to fifteen. The letters stop at F, so L can never appear in a hexadecimal number.

Answer: B

Correct answer: 128

Each bit is independently 0 or 1, so \( n \) bits give \( 2^n \) distinct patterns. With \( n = 7 \), \[ 2^7 = 128 \] patterns are available - which is exactly why 7-bit ASCII defines 128 characters. \( 2^6 = 64 \), \( 2^8 = 256 \) and \( 2^9 = 512 \) correspond to 6, 8 and 9 bits.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Small talk

Smalltalk, developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, was the first system built around a graphical user interface - overlapping windows, icons, pop-up menus and a mouse - and it ran on the Xerox Alto. The ideas it introduced were later taken up by the Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Ethernet, also from PARC, is a networking technology rather than an interface.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Microwaves

Coaxial cable, twisted pair and optical fibre are all guided media - the signal travels inside a physical conductor or fibre laid between the two ends. Microwaves travel through open space between antennas, so they are the unguided, wireless medium in the list.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Printer

A touch screen, a mouse and a keyboard all carry information into the computer, so they are input devices. A printer takes results out of the machine and puts them on paper, which makes it the output device in the list.

Answer: D

Correct answer: an algorithm

An algorithm is a finite, ordered set of unambiguous steps that solves a problem or computes a result, each step being effective and the whole terminating. It is written before any code and can be expressed in words or a flowchart; a compiler is the program that translates the code that later implements it.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Chip

A chip is a single integrated circuit - one piece of silicon carrying a complete circuit of transistors, sealed in a package. A gate is one logic element within such a circuit, while a CPU may span several chips and a motherboard is a board carrying many of them.

Answer: B

Correct answer: IBM 1401

Nepal’s first computer was an IBM 1401, brought in by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 1971 to process the national census. The 1401 was IBM’s widely sold transistorised business machine of the early 1960s.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Multiuser

A multiuser system lets several people work at once, each with a session of their own, the operating system dividing processor time, memory and files between them and keeping one user’s work separate from another’s. Multiprocessing describes several processors in one machine, and multithreading several threads within one program.