Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
March 1999 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day
Every GCSE Computer Science sheet published in March 1999, with answers. Systems, data representation, networks, algorithms and programming.
Every sheet in March 1999
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st March 1999A table called products has fields productId, name, price and stock. Write an SQL statement that changes the price of the product with productId 7 to 15.99.
- 2nd March 1999Each 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.
- 3rd March 1999Which flowchart symbol shape is used to represent a decision point (e.g. a yes/no branch)?
- 4th March 1999State the two values a Boolean data type can hold.
- 5th March 1999Convert the denary number 200 to hexadecimal, showing your working.
- 6th March 1999Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
- 7th March 1999Explain the purpose of a breakpoint.
- 8th March 1999Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
- 9th March 1999Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
- 10th March 1999Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
- 11th March 1999Explain why a running maximum should be initialised to the first element of the array rather than to 0.
- 12th March 1999An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
- 13th March 1999A 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.
- 14th March 1999Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
- 15th March 1999Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
- 16th March 1999State the pseudocode operator commonly used to join (concatenate) two strings, then show how it joins 'Rev' and 'ision' to produce 'Revision'.
- 17th March 1999A 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.
- 18th March 1999Name the four layers of the TCP/IP model in order from the one closest to the user.
- 19th March 1999Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
- 20th March 1999Define the term 'primary key' as used in a database table.
- 21st March 1999Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
- 22nd March 1999An 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.
- 23rd March 1999Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
- 24th March 1999Convert the 8-bit binary number 10110100 directly to hexadecimal by splitting it into nibbles.
- 25th March 1999Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
- 26th March 1999A program compiles and runs but always outputs an average that is too small. State the type of error and explain why the translator did not report it.
- 27th March 1999Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
- 28th March 1999State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
- 29th March 1999State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
- 30th March 1999An array named temps holds 12 values. State the index of the first item and the index of the last item.
- 31st March 1999Define the term 'pixel'.