Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
August 1998 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day
Every GCSE Computer Science sheet published in August 1998, with answers. Systems, data representation, networks, algorithms and programming.
Every sheet in August 1998
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st August 1998A 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.
- 2nd August 1998Give two reasons why network communication is divided into layers.
- 3rd August 1998Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
- 4th August 1998Give one advantage of a relational database over a flat-file database.
- 5th August 1998Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
- 6th August 1998An 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.
- 7th August 1998Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
- 8th August 1998Convert the hexadecimal number 3F to denary.
- 9th August 1998Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
- 10th August 1998Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
- 11th August 1998Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
- 12th August 1998State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
- 13th August 1998State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
- 14th August 1998A 2D array grid is declared as grid[4][6]. State how many rows and columns it has and how many elements it holds in total.
- 15th August 1998Define the term 'pixel'.
- 16th August 1998Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
- 17th August 1998Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
- 18th August 1998Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
- 19th August 1998A programmer wants any syntax error in their program to be reported before the program starts running at all. State whether a compiler or an interpreter behaves this way, and explain why.
- 20th August 1998A 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.
- 21st August 1998State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
- 22nd August 1998A 'quantity' field on a website must only accept whole numbers from 1 to 10. Which validation check identifies that 15 has been entered?
- 23rd August 1998A table called bookings has fields bookingId, customerName and eventDate. Write an SQL statement that deletes the booking with bookingId 45.
- 24th August 1998A row of 8 pixels is WWWBBBWW. Use run-length encoding to encode this row as pairs of (colour, run length).
- 25th August 1998An array contains [9, 2, 6], to be sorted using insertion sort. Show the state of the array after each new element has been inserted into its correct position.
- 26th August 1998Complete: NOT 0 = ?
- 27th August 1998Convert the denary number 39 to an 8-bit binary number, showing your working.
- 28th August 1998State what LAN stands for.
- 29th August 1998Describe what syntax highlighting is and how it helps a programmer.
- 30th August 1998An 8-bit register stores the value 01100000 (denary 96). State the resulting 8-bit binary value after a left shift by 1 place, and state whether an overflow occurs.
- 31st August 1998Which CPU register holds the address of the next instruction to be fetched?