15 questions
A. IDENTIFY THE COMPONENTS OF THE CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT AND HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER AND INTERACT WITH MEMORY
1. Arithmetic/Logic Unit (ALU) – performs calculations
2. Control Unit (CU) – directs the computer system to perform a calculation, access memory, do a read/write operation
3. Registers – temporarily holds
a. data brought from memory to be processed by the ALU
b. results to be sent to memory
B. DESCRIBE HOW PROGRAM INSTRUCTIONS ARE EXECUTED BY THE COMPUTER
1. CU gets an instruction and places it in memory
2. CU decodes the instruction
3. CU notifies the appropriate part of hardware to take action
4. Control is transferred to the appropriate part of hardware
5. Task is performed
6. Control is returned to the CU
C. DESCRIBE HOW THE COMPUTER FINDS INSTRUCTIONS AND DATA
1. Each memory location has unique address
2. Program Counter (PC) holds address of next instruction
a. Instructions are fetched into the control unit
3. CPU has two buses for this purpose
a. Address bus where data/instructions are requested
b. Data bus where memory system responds with the appropriate bits
D. DESCRIBE THE LAYERS OF COMPLEXITY IN THE CPU
1. Functional units correspond to instructions
a. Functional units described in Boolean logic
b. Boolean logic operations (AND, OR, NOT) correspond to gates
c. Gates made of transistors
E. DESCRIBE THE COMPONENTS OF A MICROCOMPUTER SYSTEM UNIT’S MOTHERBOARD
1. CPU
2. Memory
3. Connections
4. Expansion buses
F. LIST THE MEASURES OF COMPUTER PROCESSING SPEED AND EXPLAIN THE APPROACHES THAT INCREASE SPEED
1. Microprocessor speed
a. MHz/GHz – machine cycles
b. MIPS – instructions
c. Megaflop – floating-point operations
2. Bus speed
a. bus width (bits or lines)
b. bus speed in MHz/GHz
3. Cache
a. size
b. L1 and L2
4. Processor type
a. RISC
b. CISC
5. Parallel Processing
6. Pipelining
9 questions
A. SCANNING
1. optical character recognition (OCR)
B. DIGITAL CAMERAS
1. pixels and resolution
2. connectivity
C. VIDEO CAPTURE
1. requires expansion board
D. DESCRIBE HOW A MONITOR WORKS AND THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT DETERMINE QUALITY
1. Cathode ray tube (CRT) uses raster scanning
a. how it works
i. sweeps electron beams across the back of the screen
ii. phosphorus coating glows when hit by electrons
b. quality
i. refresh/scan rate
ii. dot pitch
iii. resolution
iv. size of monitor
E. DIFFERENTIATE AMONG DIFFERENT KINDS OF PRINTERS
1. Dot-matrix
2. Line printers
3. Laser
4. Ink-jet
8 questions
A. DESCRIBE THE BASIC COMPONENTS OF A NETWORK
1. Sending device
2. Communications link
3. Receiving device
4. Modem
B. EXPLAIN THE METHODS OF DATA TRANSMISSION, INCLUDING TYPES OF SIGNALS, MODULATION, AND CHOICES AMONG TRANSMISSION MODES
1. Transmission Methods
a. digital transmission – pulses over digital lines
b. analog transmission – signals sent as waves over standard telephone lines
2. Devices
a. modem – modulate/demodulate
b. ISDN
c. DSL
d. Cable modems
e. Cellular modems
3. Transmission types
a. sending and receiving devices must work together to communicate
b. asynchronous transmission
i. start/stop transmission
ii. low-speed communications
c. synchronous transmission
i. blocks of data transmitted at a time
ii. more complex
iii. more expensive
iv. faster transmission
d. duplex setting
i. direction of data flow
ii. simplex – one direction
iii. half-duplex – either direction, but one way at a time
iv. full-duplex – both directions at once
C. Differentiate among the various kinds of communications links and appreciate the need for protocols
1. Bandwidth
2. Media
a. wire pair (twisted pair)
b. shielded twisted pair
c. coaxial cable
d. fiber optics
e. microwave transmission
f. satellite transmission
3. Protocols
a. set of rules governing the exchange of data
b. standards
D. DESCRIBE VARIOUS NETWORK CONFIGURATIONS
1. Topology – physical layout
a. star
b. ring
c. bus
E. LIST THE COMPONENTS, TYPES, AND PROTOCOLS OF A LOCAL AREA NETWORK
1. Components
a. PCs
b. network cable
c. NIC (network interface card)
2. Connecting LANs
a. bridge – connects similar protocols
b. router – directs traffic to best path
i. book says: “gateway – connects LANs with varying protocols”
ii. I say router does this
c. IP switches – replacing routers
3. Organization of resources
a. client/server
b. file server
c. peer-to-peer
d. protocols
e. Ethernet
f. token ring
5 questions
A. Entering text
B. Editing text
1. Selecting text
2. Cut and paste
3. Search and replace
C. Elements of formatting
1. Font (style, size, weight)
2. Indentation
3. Justification
D. Physical vs. logical document structure
6 questions
A. Worksheets and workbooks
B. Row and column labels
C. Cells and cell addresses
D. Cell values vs. display values
E. Formulas
F. Ranges and range addresses
7 questions
A. Tags
1. Matching
2. Empty
3. Document (HEAD, HTML, BODY)
B. Attributes
C. Links
D. Images
E. Editing HTML
F. Viewing HTML