Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
October 1990 5-a-day
Every sheet in October 1990
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st October 1990Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
- 2nd October 1990Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
- 3rd October 1990Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
- 4th October 1990Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
- 5th October 1990Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
- 6th October 1990Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
- 7th October 1990An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
- 8th October 1990A 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.
- 9th October 1990Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
- 10th October 1990Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
- 11th October 1990Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
- 12th October 1990A 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.
- 13th October 1990Define the term protocol.
- 14th October 1990Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
- 15th October 1990A 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.
- 16th October 1990Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
- 17th October 1990An 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.
- 18th October 1990Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
- 19th October 1990Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
- 20th October 1990Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
- 21st October 1990Explain the purpose of a breakpoint.
- 22nd October 1990Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
- 23rd October 1990State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
- 24th October 1990State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
- 25th October 1990Explain why a running maximum should be initialised to the first element of the array rather than to 0.
- 26th October 1990Define the term 'pixel'.
- 27th October 1990Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
- 28th October 1990Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
- 29th October 1990Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
- 30th October 1990State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.
- 31st October 1990A 1 TB hard disk drive costs 40 pounds. A 500 GB solid-state drive costs 60 pounds. Calculate the cost per gigabyte of each device, and state which is cheaper per GB. Use 1 TB = 1000 GB.