Computer Hardware Question and Answer Part-1

Feb 17, 20178 min read

Updated: Jan 22

Hardware question

1: 9 bit SIMMs have how many pins? A: 30

2: How many bits is the system data bus for a Pentium Processor? A: 64

3: How many bits is the data bus for a 486DX4 processor? A: 32

4: A serial data port on your PC would have how many pinouts? A: 9

5: How many wires does the standard IDE drive cable have? A: 40

6: How big is the conventional memory in a PC? A: 640K

7: How many bits is the system bus for a 386SX processor? A: 16

8: How many bits is the system bus for a 386DX processor? A: 32

9: What is the maximum length for a parallel cable? A: 15 ft.

10: What IRQ does the real time clock use? A: 8

11: What form of software can also be called firmware? A: System BIOS

12: What would you set your multimeter to if you wanted to detect an AC ripple? A: AC Voltage

13: After you install a new floppy drive and restart the system, the floppy drive light stays on constantly and you get an “FDD Controller Failure” POST error. What is the problem? A: Floppy cable on backwards

14: What type of port communicates information to a peripheral device one bit at a time? A: Serial port

15: Should you wear a grounding strap when servicing a CRT monitor? A: No

16: What are the 4 types of DC voltage usually produced by a power supply? A: +5V ,-5V ,+12V ,-12V

17: If your monitor just shows dots when you turn it on, what is most likely the problem? A: Bad Video RAM

18: You have 2 hard drives installed on your primary EIDE controller. You install a CD-ROM on your secondary EIDE controller. What jumper setting would you use for the CD-ROM? A: Master

19: What factor determines the amount of RAM a CPU can control? A: Width of the Address Bus

20: What would you use to clean a monitor screen? A: Anti-static spray

21: Missing slot covers on a PC can cause what problem? A: Overheating

22: A 15 pin, three row, female connector on the back of a PC would be used for? A: VGA/SVGA por

23: On a laser printer the primary corona does what?- Places a uniform negative charge on the photosensitive drum.

24: The correct AT command to tell a modem to hang up is? A: ATH

25: Using a portion of hard disk space to serve as RAM is called? A: Virtual Memory

26: The AT command to tell a modem to dial a number is? A: ATD{number}

27: How many pins does a Joystick or MIDI port connector have? A: 15

28: How can you tell that a PC has successfully completed its Power on Self Test (POST)? A: A single beep at startup

29: Locations in memory are referred to as? A: Addresses

30: On a laser printer, the laser beam performs what function? A: Changes the charge on the photosensitive drum

31: Which electrical component will hold a charge even when no voltage is being applied? A: Capacitor

32: What is the IDE CMOS/BIOS limit for the size of a hard drive? A: 528 million bytes or 504 MegaBytes

33: You can probably determine that a monitor is working, even though it is not connected to a PC, by performing what action? A: Turn up the brightness to see if the raster appears.

34: What purpose does the system ROM serve? A: Starts the system when the computer is turned on.

35: A SIMM stick has 9 DRAM chips. How many bits wide is it? A: 8 bits + parity

36: What is the difference between SRAM and DRAM?

A: SRAM has built in switches and does not have to be refreshed.

37: What type of printers are considered impact printers? A: Dot Matrix and Daisy Wheel

38: How does a Pentium Pro processor differ from a Pentium processor? A: Pentium Pro has onboard L2 cache

39: What is the binary equivalent of decimal 3. A: 011

40: In order for a device to communicate with the CPU is must have? A: An I/O Address

41: The lower the SIMM access rate the ___________ the memory. A: Faster

42: Your PC is working perfectly, but you notice the power supply fan has stopped working. What should you do? A: Replace the power supply

43: What does DMA stand for? A: Direct Memory Address

44: Capacitance is measured in units called? A: Farads

45: The default memory address for the monochrome region of memory is? A: B0000 - B7FFF

46: What does PIO stand for? A: Programmed Input/Output

47: In serial communication, the setting 8,N,1 means? A: 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit

48: The 2 most important considerations when selecting a surge suppressor are? A: Clamping speed and Clamping voltage

49: Your sound card locks up your parallel port tape device when both are running. What is probably the problem? A: IRQ conflict

50: You apply a password to CMOS but later forget it. What should you do?

A: Clear the CMOS by shorting the CMOS jumper.

51: What should you do before you attempt to discharge a CRT? A: Turn power off before removing power source.

52: High humidity can cause what type of problem?

A: It can cause electrical current to bleed around the chips causing shorts.

53: When using an anti-static wrist strap, the best place to attach the grounding clip is? A: To the frame of the PC

54: On a laser printer, what moves the toner from the drum to the paper? A: Transfer Corona

55: The default I/O address for COM1 is? A: 3F8

56: ESD occurs between two objects that have? A: Different electrical potentials

57: How many pins does a serial port connector have? A: 9

58: What function does the power supply perform? A: Converts AC current into DC current.

59: On a dot matrix printer, a good image on one side of the page and a poor image on the other side of the page would mean what? A: Platen out of alignment

60: A mouse begins to move erratically jumping around when moved. What is the problem? A: Dirty mouse

61: Which AT command is used to reset a modem? A: ATZ

62: What information is stored in CMOS or PRAM?

A: Date and time. CPU and memory size characteristics. Floppy and hard disk configuration data.

63: The term "ESD" refers to? A: Electrostatic Discharge.

64: How do you dispose of a PC battery? A: Check the battery label information for special disposal procedures.

65: How can you limit the chance of AC line noise? A: Install the computer system on its own power circuit.

66: You suspect a virus has entered your computer. What will not be affected by the virus? A: CMOS or ROMBIOS

67: What will happen when shadowing is enabled in a computers BIOS?

A: Instructions stored in various ROM chips are copied into extended memory.

68: What does an IRQ allow interface cards to do? A: Interrupt the CPU to request service.

69: Which ports use IRQ4? A: COM1 and COM3 70: What uses IRQ3? A: COM2 and COM4

71: What IRQ is assigned to the floppy disk controller? A: IRQ6

72: How can you tell if the CMOS backup battery is going bad? A: Computer will start losing the date and time. 73: How many intelligent devices can be daisy-chained together from a standard SCSI controller?

A: Seven (8 if you include the adapter card)

74: If a SCSI card is controlling both external and internal devices where would the terminators need to be located? A: The terminating resistor must be disabled on the controller, and both the last internal and last external devices on the chain must be terminated.

75: What is the default resolution of a VGA monitor? A: 640x480

76: What does TSR stands for? A: Terminate and Stay Resident.

77: Which allows faster access; RAM, ROM, or virtual memory? A: RAM

78: When installing a high capacity hard disk drive on older machines, what might you have to upgrade?

A: ROM System BIOS

79: What is parity error? A: Indicates a problem with data stored in memory (Bad RAM).

80: What type of a connector does a parallel cable have? A: DB25

81: A parallel printer cable has a DB25 connector on one end and a __connector on the other end.A: Centronics

82: Software or firmware embedded in chips on the circuit board which determines compatibility. - BIOS

83: The design of the ISA bus only allows for support of 16 MB of memory. If that is the case, how can a computer support 64MB of memory? A: By page swapping

84: Hard drives start out essentially blank. They need to have their sectors defined on each track. In addition, the sectors have to be marked so that data can later be found and retrieved. This process is called? A: Low level formatting

85: LPT2 uses what I/O address? A: 278

86: What are I/O addresses and what do they do? A: Communication ports between a device and the CPU.

87: An error detection technique consisting of a cyclic algorithm performed on each block or frame of data by both sending and receiving modems. A: Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC)

88: How many programs may reside in the HMA? A: Only One at a time.

89: This step of the Electrographic Printing process puts a uniform negative charge on the drum, erasing the electrical image of the previous page. A: Conditioning

90:Serial cables can be longer than parallel ones, with the maximum recommended length for a serial cable being? A: 50 ft. 91: This topology uses a hub instead of a single trunk cable. Individual workstations extend from the hub, each connected by its own cable. Signals are broadcast to all stations or passed from station to station. A: Star

92: How many transceivers can be integrated onto a Thicknet backbone? A: 100

93: Consider the following scenario: You are looking at a laser printer that prints perfectly formed letters that smear easily.Using what you know about the EP process, what assembly would you suspect? – Fuser

94: What was the first CPU to come with a built-in coprocessor? A: 486DX

95: DC2000, DAT, and QIC80 are all examples of what? A: Tape media

96: What type of motherboard has a soft power-on switch? A: ATX

97: What occurs during the writing part of the EP print process?

A: An image of 0Vdc charge is ‘written’ to the drum with a laser

98: The first CPU to have a 64bit data path was? A: 586

99: What are the 6 steps of Laser Printer process? A: cleaning , charging ,writing ,developing ,transfer, fusing

400: In order for a modem to accept data, which of the following signals must be present? (choose all that apply) A: Carrier detect Receive data

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Computer Hardware Question and Answer Part-1

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