120 most probable quiz questions Computers

(The Hard Part of It)

1. Abacus, one of the earliest known computing devices, is still being used instead of modern calculators in some oriental countries, like Japan and China. What is it known as in Japan?

(a) Soroban (b) Suanpan

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2. Which conceptual machine, had it been made in the 1830s, would have been the world’s first general-purpose computer?

(a) Analytical Engine (b) Differential Analyzer

3. Which machine conceived by Charles Babbage in 1820s, was finally constructed in 1991 by London Science Museum to celebrate his 200th birth anniversary?

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(a) Analytical Engine (b) Differential Analyzer (c) Tabulating machine (d) Difference Engine

4. The Differential Analyzer, built by Vannevar Bush in the 1930s, was a

(a) Mechanical analog computer

(b) Electrical analog computer

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(d) Electronic calculator?

5. Which was the first truly electronic digital computer?

(a) EN I AC (b) UNIVAC

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6. What does ENIAC stand for?

(a) Electronic Numeric Integrator and Calculator

(b) Electronic Numerically Integrated Computer

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(d) Electronic Numeric Intelligent Advanced Computer

7. For what purpose was ENIAC built?

(a) To assist the US Space research program.

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(b) Calculation of ballistic firing tables by Ballistics Research Laboratory of the US Army.

(d) For the calculation of US Census data.

8. The first American electronic computer designed for business and administrative use was

(a) Mark I (b) ENIAC

9. Which of the following computers was the first ‘mass produced’ computer, all its predecessors being ‘one-off’ units?

(a) Mark I (b) ENIAC

10. Many think that UNIVAC I was built by IBM. Which company was the actual manufacturer of UNIVAC?

(a) Remington Rand (b) Tandem Computers

11. Which computer was commissioned on May 17, 1943 as Project PX?

(a) ENIAC (b) UNIVAC I

12. Tandem-16 from Tandem Computers was popular in the banking industry when introduced in 1973 for its online transaction processing capability. What first had the computer to its credit then?

(a) The first computer with a CRT display unit

(b) The first computer with fault-tolerance capability

(d) The first computer to have a microprocessor

13. It is said that computer pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper and her team members coined the term “debugging” when they discovered an insect jamming the relays in the computer they were working on. What kind of insect did they find, and in which machine?

(a) A moth and Harvard Mark II

(b) A moth and EDSAC

(d) A cockroach and UNIVAC

14. Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III took a gamble with what little funds they had from their failing calculator business to make a do-it- yourself kit computer on then newly- released Intel 8080 microprocessor

The machine proved to be a big success. Name this system

(a) Altair 8800 (b) Tandem-16

15. PDP series of computers manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from early 1960s to mid-1990s occupies a special place in the computing history. Particularly, the PDP-11 was a very popular machine having a number of novel features in its time. What was the full name of PDP?

(a) Powerful Data Processor

(b) Programmed Data Processor

(d) Parallel Data Processor

16. The term mainframe originally referred to what?

(a) Computers made up of vacuum tubes

(b) The cabinet containing the central processing unit

(d) Super computers

17. When was the term ‘mainframe’ began to be used to refer to large roomfilling computers?

(a) When the first truly electronic computer was built

(b) With the introduction of IBM System/360

(d) In the 1980s with the introduction of PCs

18. Which type of computers has earned the nickname of ‘big iron’?

(a) Any computer that has become completely obsolete

(b) Large, expensive, room-filling mainframes (C) Industrial robots

(d) Computers without any preloaded software

19. In the 1980s, USA denied which of the following super computers to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, citing its possible misuse for nuclear applications?

(a) Cray XMP-14 (b) Cray Y-MP

20. Where was the first electronic computer installed in India?

(a) Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

(b) Defense Research & Development Organization

(d) Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata,

21. What was the name of that computer?

(a) The Hollerith Electronic Computer HEC-2M

(b) UNIVAC 1108

(d) IBM 704

22. Which electronic special-purpose digital machine was built in great secrecy by the Post Office Research Station in London in early 1940s to break secret German codes during the World War H?

(a) Enigma (b) Lorenz SZ 40/42

23. Which well-known magazine named the Computer as its ‘Man of the Year’ in 1982?

(a) The Wall Street Journal (b) Time (c) BusinessWeek (d) Newsweek

24. Computing power is often measured in MIPS. What do the letters in it stand for?

(a) Million Integrated Circuits Per Square inch

(b) Mega Instructions Per Second

(d) Minimum Instructions Per Second

25. The power of a super computer is measured in terms of

(a) MIPS

(b) BIPS (Billion Instructions per Second)

(d) FLOPS (Floating Point Operations per Second)

26. This super computer’s large number of silicon chips used to be overheated so much that its developer kept the chips from melting by immersing the computer in a cooling bath of inert liquid fluorocarbon. Name the super computer

(a) CRAY-1 (b) CRAY-2

27. What was a ‘washing machine’ in the era of mainframes?

(a) 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets

(b) 8-inch floppy disk drives

(d) Large CPU cabinets.

28. Which was the first computer with graphical user interface (GUI)?

(a) Alto by Xerox (b) Lisa from Apple Computer

29. In which computers, a series of chimes, known as chimes of doom, sound as a result of serious system failure?

(a) IBM ThinkPad (b) Compaq Presario

30. VAX was a popular family of 32-bit minicomputers from Digital Equipment Corporation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What does the acronym VAX stand for?

(a) Virtual Address extension (b) Virtual Accessible extension (c) Variable Address Xenix (d) Versatile Addressable extension

31. What does the term “five-nines availability” mean?

(a) A system is free from the Y2K problem

(b) The system has high availability, i.e. it has achieved 99.999 percent uptime

32. What is the footprint of a PC?

(a) The time by which it becomes completely obsolete.

(b) The time it takes to boot up.

(d) The gross weight of it.

33. Xerox Alto, a workstation developed for internal use at Xerox and distributed in limited numbers to few universities, was the first machine to incorporate many innovations, like icons, mouse, bit-mapped display, Ethernet networking, etc. But which was the first commercial system to incorporate these, technologies as well as innovations, like folders, file servers, print servers, email, WYSIWYG, etc.?

(a) Apple Lisa (b) Xerox Star

34. What happens to a micro-computer when it undergoes “lobotomy”?

(a) Its hard disk is formatted and the software reloaded.

(b) It is disassembled and compo-nents sold separately.

(d) It gets a new CPU cabinet.

35. Which of the following can be termed as the example of first modern embedded computer?

(a) Apollo Guidance Computer

(b) Guidance computer for the Minuteman missile

(d) Computer onboard the Patriot cruise missile

36. In hacker jargon, when a computer is said to be nude?

(a) A new computer without a monitor

(b) A new computer delivered without an operating system

(d) A computer, with transparent cases in monitor, CPU, key-board and mouse showing all the internal circuitry

37. What is a white box in the context of computer hardware?

(a) CPU cases in white or silver colors

(b) A personal computer assembled from off-the-shelf parts purchased separately in retail

(d) An external hard disk

38. What is a white book?

(a) A hardware manual

(b) A software manual

(d) A computer game hardware

39. PC (personal computer) was originally a trade name of

(a) IBM (b) Apple Computer

40. In 1970, the Japanese calculator company Busicom’s request to Intel to design a set of special purpose integrated circuits for use in a new calculator led the later company’s Ted Hoff to think of a general- purpose computer processor. Which microprocessor resulted out of Hoff’s inspiration?

(a) 4004 (b) 4040

41. Which was the original microprocessor in the 80X 86 families of microprocessors?

(a) 8086 (b) 8088

42. Which Intel microprocessor started the PC revolution?

(a) 4004 (b) 8008

43. The first single-chip as well as the first commercially available microprocessor chip was

(a) Motorola 68000 (b) Zilog

44. What does MMX in Pentium MMX (a microprocessor from Intel) stand for?

(a) Million Memory extension

(b) Multi Media extension

(d) Multi Media exchange

45. Many work stations and servers run on RISC technology. What does it stand for?

(a) Random Instruction Set Computing

(b) Reduced Instruction Set Computing

(d) Revised Instruction Set Computing

46. Intel microprocessors operate on CISC technology. What does CISC stand for?

(a) Complex Information Set Computing

(b) Complex Instruction Set Computing

(d) Calculated Information Set Computing

47. Intel did not name its Pentium microprocessor as 586 in continuance of the x86 families of microprocessors. Why?

(a) Intel learnt that the number names like 486, 586, etc. cannot be trademarked

(b) The Pentium uses a different concept altogether from the earlier versions • (c) To avoid monotony

(d) To position it as the “Processor of the New Millennium”

48. What fault were the early Pentium chips from Intel carrying?

(a) They were not carrying any heat sink

(b) They were without CPU fans

(d) The Millennium Bug

49. Which early versions of Pentium microprocessors from Intel had been dubbed as “coffee warmers” because of the amount of heat they were producing?

(a) P5 60 and 66 MHz (b) P54 75 and 90 MHz (c) P54C 133 and 150 MHz (d) P55C 200 and 300 MHz.

50. Different versions of which microprocessor from Intel had the code names ‘Katmai’, ‘Coppermine’, and ‘Tualatin’ during development?

(a) 8088 (b) Pentium II

51. Which microprocessor from Intel had the code name of ‘Willamette’ during its development?

(a) 486 (b) Pentium II

52. What is von Neumann bottleneck?

(a) Competition between data and instructions for CPU time.

(b) Constraints imposed by the speed of devices, like floppy, hard or CD drives on the access to data on them.

(d) Disagreement in the computer industry over truly open systems.

53. This was a revolutionary plan from Intel, AMD and Microsoft that involved building security into personal computers and serves at the microprocessor level. When available, this technology will enable the users to filter out spam, authorize only wanted programs to run, encrypt the data on the computer thereby preventing others to read it or modify it what name has been given to this plan?

(a) Iridium (b) Palladium

54. If such names as ‘Semiconductor Triode’, ‘Solid Triode’, ‘Surface States Triode’, ‘Crystal Triode’ and ‘lotatron’ were considered, then what name was ultimately chosen for this crucial electronic circuitry component?

(a) Diode (b) Triode

55. The term QWERTY refers to

(a) A standard for CD-ROMs

(b) The traditional keyboard layout

(d) The standard CPU cabinet design

56. What was developed by August Dvorak and William L Dealey in 1936?

(a) The optical mouse

(b) The Dvorak keyboard

(d) The first facsimile machine that used the concept of scanning

57. What is the measure of the amount of light radiated by a computer monitor?

(a) Luminance (b) Pixel

58. Which piece of electronic circuit is also called ‘glassfet’?

(a) Resisters (b) Capacitors

59. Which computer device, invented in 1970, was described as an ‘X-Y position indicator for a display system’ in its patent application?

(a) Cathode Ray Tube (b) Scanner (c) Joy stick (d) Mouse

60. Which company was the first to distribute mouse as a standard component with personal computers?

(a) Apple Computer (b) IBM

61. In the computer industry, what is the practice of buying various parts of a computer from the best sources known as?

(a) Assembly shopping (b) Window-shopping (c) Body shopping (d) Body hunting

62. What piece of object is 120 mm in diameter, 1.2 mm thick, composed of a polycarbonate plastic substrate, one side coated with thin reflective metal and a lacquer coating as well?

(a) Hard disk (b) Floppy disk

63. What is the difference between an inkjet printer and a babble jet printer?

(a) An inkjet printer uses piezoelectric crystals to shoot ink from nozzles, whereas a bubble jet printer uses heating elements for the same purpose.

(b) The former uses water-based ink, whereas the latter uses oil-based ink.

(d) The former uses ink whereas the latter uses powder toner.

64. Which company calls its inkjet printers by the name Bubble jet?

(a) Epson (b) HP

65. Where do you find an “activity light” in a computer?

(a) In optical mouse

(b) A small colored light on the front panel of a computer’s CPU case, which flickers when a hard or floppy disk drive is active

(d) Inside the CRT of the monitor.

66. In what size the floppy disks were coming when first introduced?

(a) 10 inches (b) 8 inches

67. In computer lingo, what are ‘mouse droppings’?

(a) The trail left behind the mouse cursor

(b) The mouse ball

(d) Pixels that are not properly re-stored when the mouse is moved.

68. A drunken mouse is the one whose pointer seems to jump wildly and irritatingly when something is being selected on the screen. What causes mouse to behave like this?

(a) Virus

(b) Electric fluctuations

(d) Dirt and finger grease.

69. Gyricon is a type of electronic paper being developed by which company?

(a) General Electric (b) Philips

70. ATX (Advanced Technology extended) is a specification for PC motherboard architectures with built-in audio and video capabilities. Which company introduced this specification in 1995?

(a) Intex (b) Intel

71. What is the name of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Standard that describes the way data is encoded in CD-ROMs?

(a) Yellow Book (b) Green Book

72. In a computer, where would you find a yoke?

(a) In the Cathode Ray Tube of the monitor

(b) In the floppy drive assembly

(d) In the key board.

73. What is the function of a hardware device called Degausser?

(a) It guards the hardware from sudden changes in supply voltage.

(b) It removes magnetization from a video monitor or tape recorder head It also erases information from a magnetic media.

(d) It is a plug-n-play port to attach other external devices to a computer.

74. Early computers were using punched cards as storage devices. But which machine used the punched cards first?

(a) Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

(b) Hollerith’s statistical tabulating Machine

(d) Mechanical calculators

75. In the earliest IBM PCs and display units of computers belonging to 1970’s and 80’s, what was the length of a standard line of text?

(a) 32 characters (b) 64 characters

76. When two modems are ‘handshaking’ what exactly are they doing?

(a) Converting digital data into analog data

(b) Converting analog data into digital data

(d) Exchanging information about which protocol to use for transmission

77. In computer terminology, what does ATM stand for?

(a) Asynchronous Transfer Mode

(b) Automatic Transfer Mode

78. What does a hardware device called “dongle” do?

(a) It helps a user to work in languages other than English for different applications

(b) It saves the user files in it in the eventuality of a system hang up

(c) It helps in ensuring that legal copies of the proprietary software, with which it comes, are not run on unlicensed additional computers

(d) This is a turbo mechanism to boost processor speed

79. LPT is the logical device name for a line printer in MS-DOS operating system when first used, the full form of this term was

(a) Line Printer (b) Line Print Terminal

80. Some printers print in one direction in one line (say from left to right) and then the next line is printed in the reverse direction (right to left). What term is used to denote writing in this fashion?

(a) Boustrophedon (b) Line printing

81. BURN-Proof (BURN stands for Burn under Run error) is a technology that enables CD recording to automatically pause recording process, and to resume recording when the cause of interruption is resolved. Which company developed this technology?

(a) Sanyo (b) Sony

82. in the context of computer storage media, what is WORM?

(a) Writable Optical Media

(b) Write Once, Read Many

(d) Writing Official Records into Memory

83. What is an “interactive voice response” (1VR) system?

(a) A mobile handset that offers the voice dialing feature.

(b) A computer that is able to take voice commands and operate.

(c) A computer in a dial-in information service that operates by taking input in the form of spoken words, numbers, tones or dialed pulses generated by the telephone instrument.

(d) An interactive computer game that takes human voice input.

84. This keyboard, called ‘Chiclet keyboard’, was introduced with which computer?

(a) PCJr (b) PC XT

85. On which computer peripheral would you find a trident-like logo?

(a) USB (b) Tablet PC

86. What does the acronym USB stand for?

(a) Ultimate Serial Bus (b) Universal Software Base (c) Ultimate Soft Bias (d) Universal Serial Bus

87. Which laser technology with a wavelength of 405 nanometer is being sought to replace the red laser technology used in today’s compact disc and laser printer technologies?

(a) Blue laser (b) Violet laser

88. In compact disc (CD) and digital versatile disc (DVD) technology, manufacturers adopt the convention of indicating the read time in multiples of the speed of the compact disc in its original version, which is denoted by X. One X is how many kilobytes per second?

(a) 56 (b) 100

89. What term is used to describe a hardware product that includes only the bare necessary products needed to install into a computer?

(a) Brown device (b) Brown box

90. Expand the term DOA

(a) Dead On Arrival

(b) Delayed Operating system Action

(d) Double Option Application

91. What is RS-232-C standard?

(a) An industry accepted standard for serial communications connection.

(b) A standard for audio CDs.

(d) A standard for capturing of TV signal on a hard disk.

92. Which company was producing a typewriter called Selectric typewriter?

(a) Remington (b) Godrej

93. What are “bells and whistles” in a piece of hardware or software?

(a) End user license agreement

(b) Attractive features beyond the basic functionality

(d) Free add on given later by the seller

94. Bernoulli box is a removable floppy disk drive for PCs with high storage capacity. It has been named after Daniel Bernoulli, an 18th-century physicist. What was his most significant contribution?

(a) Principle of aerodynamic lift

(b) Laws of thermodynamics

(d) Discovery of semiconductors.

95. What does the standard ISO 9241-3 pertain to?

(a) Ergonomics requirements for office work with visual display terminals

(b) Read/Write procedures for a compact disk

(d) Ergonomics requirements in the design of a mouse

96. What is the resolution unit of a mouse?

(a) Mickey (b) Mini

97. You know LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. But what is a Dark- Emitting Diode (DED)?

(a) A LED in OFF state

(b) An LCD without the backlit light

(d) A burned-out LED

98. What is a floppy?

(a) A double-sided floppy disk altered so that the two sides can be used independently in a single sided drive

(b) An 8-inch floppy disk, the original size of floppies when introduced for the first time

(d) A zip drive

99. On the original IBM PC and many other older computers, what was the ‘big red switch’?

(a) The power on/off switch

(b) The reset switch

(d) The red indicator light of the hard disk

100. Memory Stick is a proprietary removable flash memory card format developed by which company?

(a) IBM (b) HP

101. What does the acronym ULSI stand for?

(a) Ultimate Large Scale Integration

(b) Ultra Large Scale Integration

(d) Unified Language for System Integration

102. What computer peripheral was first developed in 1971 by Xerox researcher Gary Stark weather by modifying a Xerox copier?

‘ (a) Facsimile machine (b) Scanner (c) Laser printer (d) Inkjet printer

ANSWERS

1(a)	2.	(a)	3.(d)	4. (a)	5. (a)	6. (a)	7.(b)	8. (d)	9.	(d)	10. a)
11. a)	12.	(b)	13.(a)	14.(a)	15. (b)	16.(b)	17.(c)	18.(b)	19.	(b)	20.(d)
21. a)	22.	(c)	23.(b)	24.(c)	25. (d)	26. b)	27.(a)	28.(a)	29.	(c)	30. a)
31.(b)	32.	(c)	33. (b)	34.(c)	35. (a)	36. b)	37. (b)	38. (c)	39.	(a)	40. a)
41. a)	42.	(d)	43. (d)	44. (b)	45. (b)	46(c)	47.(a)	48. (c)	49.	(a)	50. c)
51. d)	52.	(a)	53. (b)	54. (c)	55.(b)	56. b)	57. (a)	58.(d)	59.	(d)	60. a)
61. c)	62.	(c)	63.(a)	64. (c)	65. (b)	66.(b)	67.(b)	68.(d)	69.	(d)	70. b)
71. a)	72.	(a)	73. (b)	74. (c)	75. (c)	76. d)	77. (a)	78. (c)	79.	(b)	80. a)
81. a)	82.	(b)	83. (c)	84. (a)	85. (a)	86. d)	87. (a)	88. (c)	89.	(b)	90. a)
91-(a)	92.	(d)	93. (b)	94. (a)	95. (a)	96. (a)	97.(d)	98. (a)	98.	(a)	100. )
101.(b)	102.	(c)