Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

December 1997 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day

Every sheet in December 1997

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

  1. 1st December 1997Each pair from the previous question is stored using 2 bytes. Calculate the compression ratio achieved, given the uncompressed row (1 byte per pixel) uses 8 bytes.
  2. 2nd December 1997Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
  3. 3rd December 1997State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
  4. 4th December 1997Convert the denary number 200 to hexadecimal, showing your working.
  5. 5th December 1997Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  6. 6th December 1997Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
  7. 7th December 1997Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  8. 8th December 1997Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  9. 9th December 1997Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  10. 10th December 1997Trace 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).
  11. 11th December 1997An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  12. 12th December 1997A 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.
  13. 13th December 1997Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  14. 14th December 1997Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  15. 15th December 1997State the pseudocode operator commonly used to join (concatenate) two strings, then show how it joins 'Rev' and 'ision' to produce 'Revision'.
  16. 16th December 1997A 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.
  17. 17th December 1997Explain the role of TCP when a large file is downloaded.
  18. 18th December 1997Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  19. 19th December 1997Define the term 'primary key' as used in a database table.
  20. 20th December 1997Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  21. 21st December 1997An 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.
  22. 22nd December 1997Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  23. 23rd December 1997Convert the 8-bit binary number 10110100 directly to hexadecimal by splitting it into nibbles.
  24. 24th December 1997Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  25. 25th December 1997Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using a compiler.
  26. 26th December 1997Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  27. 27th December 1997State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  28. 28th December 1997State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  29. 29th December 1997Write a loop in pseudocode that outputs every element of a 1D array named names of length 6.
  30. 30th December 1997Define the term 'pixel'.
  31. 31st December 1997Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.