Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
January 1987 5-a-day
Every sheet in January 1987
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st January 1987Convert the denary number 39 to an 8-bit binary number, showing your working.
- 2nd January 1987Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
- 3rd January 1987Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
- 4th January 1987Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
- 5th January 1987Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
- 6th January 1987Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
- 7th January 1987Trace this algorithm with data = [4, 9, 2, 9, 7] and state the final output. total = 0; count = 0; for i = 0 to 4: if data[i] > 5 then total = total + data[i] and count = count + 1; next i; print(total, count).
- 8th January 1987An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
- 9th January 1987A 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.
- 10th January 1987Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
- 11th January 1987Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
- 12th January 1987Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
- 13th January 1987A 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.
- 14th January 1987Explain the role of TCP when a large file is downloaded.
- 15th January 1987Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
- 16th January 1987A table called members has fields memberId, firstName, lastName and joinYear. Write an SQL statement that adds a new record with memberId 12, firstName 'Priya', lastName 'Shah' and joinYear 2026.
- 17th January 1987Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
- 18th January 1987An 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.
- 19th January 1987Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
- 20th January 1987Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
- 21st January 1987Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
- 22nd January 1987Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using a compiler.
- 23rd January 1987Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
- 24th January 1987State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
- 25th January 1987State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
- 26th January 1987Write a loop in pseudocode that outputs every element of a 1D array named names of length 6.
- 27th January 1987Define the term 'pixel'.
- 28th January 1987Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
- 29th January 1987Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
- 30th January 1987Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
- 31st January 1987State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.