Study Guide for Test 3

Test 3 will be on Friday, 15 August 2008. Here are some topics
that will be on the test.

Basic Computer Parts
* What is a device driver?

* What is firmware?

* When the BIOS does a POST what is it doing?

* Distinguish between a D-shell connector and DIN connector.

* What is a port? Give three examples of ports.

* What are the differences between a serial and parallel port?

* What are some devices that are connected to serial ports and to 
parallel ports?

* What is FireWire?

* Distinguish between RJ-11 and RJ-45 connectors.


The Motherboard

* Distinguish between MMX, SSE, and 3DNOW!

* Distinguish between a Front Side Bus and Back Side Bus.

* What does bus mastering mean?

* What is the role of a chipset on the motherboard?

* What does form factor mean?


Memory
* A memory chip has been advertised as ubuffered SDRAM. Explain what 
that means to you.

* What is DDR Ram?

* Draw the memory map for a Pentium processor showing the memory range 
reserved for ROM chips.


Hard Drive
* Draw a figure and explain the terms track, sector, and cylinder on a
hard drive.

* Show pictorially how logical drives (like C, D) are delineated on a
physical hard drive.


Multimedia / Video
* How is information stored on a CD? 

* How is an analog sound wave represented in digital form?

* What is the function the decoder on a CD or DVD drive?

* What is the role of the video adapter?

* What is an active matrix LCD?


Operating System Concepts
* What is an operating system?

* List 5 things that an operating system does?

* What is a process?

* What is a Process Control Block and how is it used?

* What is the difference between the kernel and shell in Unix?

* Draw a diagram that shows the memory hierarchy in a computer system.

* What are some security measures taken by the operating system?

* Give the following commands in Unix
  a) list all files in a directory
  b) make a directory
  c) find out the current directory
  d) change to a different directory
  e) rename a file
  f) remove a file


Networking
* What is the difference between a MAC address and IP address

* Give one or two sentence explanation of the 5 layers of the Internet

* Describe star, ring, and mesh topology of an Ethernet network.


Lab Related
* Given a diagram of the motherboard used in the lab you should be able
to identify the components on the motherboard.