Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

February 1971 5-a-day

Every sheet in February 1971

The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.

  1. 1st February 1971Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  2. 2nd February 1971Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  3. 3rd February 1971Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  4. 4th February 1971Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  5. 5th February 1971Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  6. 6th February 1971Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  7. 7th February 1971An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  8. 8th February 1971A CPU's cache has a hit rate of 80%. During a task the CPU makes 4000 requests for data. Calculate the number of cache hits and cache misses.
  9. 9th February 1971Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  10. 10th February 1971Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  11. 11th February 1971State the key difference between a procedure and a function.
  12. 12th February 1971A company backs up its files onto magnetic tape cartridges, each with a capacity of 3 TB. The company needs to back up 20 TB of data. Calculate the minimum number of cartridges needed.
  13. 13th February 1971Define the term protocol.
  14. 14th February 1971Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  15. 15th February 1971Give one advantage of a relational database over a flat-file database.
  16. 16th February 1971Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  17. 17th February 1971An array called items contains [12, 45, 7, 30, 19] at indices 0 to 4. Describe how a linear search would locate the value 30, stating the number of comparisons needed.
  18. 18th February 1971Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  19. 19th February 1971Convert the hexadecimal number 3F to denary.
  20. 20th February 1971Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  21. 21st February 1971Explain the purpose of a breakpoint.
  22. 22nd February 1971Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  23. 23rd February 1971State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  24. 24th February 1971State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  25. 25th February 1971Explain why a running maximum should be initialised to the first element of the array rather than to 0.
  26. 26th February 1971Define the term 'pixel'.
  27. 27th February 1971Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
  28. 28th February 1971Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?