Motherboards
What does a motherboard do?
It connects all the components on a computer
What are the three main components of a CPU?
ALU, CU and Registers
What are the three primary physical components inside an HDD that enable it to store and access data?
Platters, read/write hands, spindle
Define an input device and an output device
Mouse and keyboard
You have opened the Command Prompt and are currently in your user profile folder, how do you change the directory to the "Documents" folder and list all files inside it?
cd Documents
dir
Why is it crucial to match the chipset to the CPU?
Because the chipset determines which CPU generations are supported
What is the purpose of CPU cache?
Cache is extremely fast small capacity memory located on or very close to the CPU die
Why does a 7,200 RPM hard drive generally provide faster data transfer speeds and better responsiveness than a 5,400 RPM drive?
Faster RPM means the platters spin faster, reducing the time the read/write head waits for the correct data sector to rotate under it
Explain the difference between character input and file input
Real time input usually typed by a user processed character by character
How do you create a new text file named notes.txt directly from the command line without opening a text editor, and then rename it to archive.txt?
type nul > notes.txt (Creates an empty file)
ren notes.txt archive.txt (Renames the file)
What are VRMs on a motherboard?
VRMs step down the 12V power from the PSU to the 1V needed by the CPU and stabilize that voltage
What is the processor pipelining?
Pipelining is a technique where the CPU overlaps the execution of multiple instructions
What is the difference between a sector and a cluster?
Sector is physical and cluster is logical
Compare Programmed I/O and Interrupt-Driven I/O. Which method is more efficient for managing a keyboard?
Interrupt-driven I/O is better
You suspect your computer has an outdated IP address from the router. What two commands can you use to release your current IP address and then request a new one?
ipconfig /release (Releases current IP address)
ipconfig /renew (Requests a new IP address)
What is PCIe bifurcation, and in what scenario would it be necessary to configure this in the BIOS?
PCIe bifurcation is the ability of a motherboard to divide a single PCIe x16 slot into smaller lanes
What are the differences between Hyper-Threading and having multiple physical cores?
A physical core is a complete, independent processing unit with its own ALU and cache
What is Shingled Magnetic Recording, and what is its primary advantage?
It allows higher capacity drives at a lower manufacturing cost
Describe the role of Direct Memory Access in a modern computer system
DMA is a capability that allows I/O devices to transfer data directly to/from RAM bypassing the CPU.
How can you find a running process named "notepad.exe" and immediately terminate it using only command-line commands?
tasklist (To find the task and its PID) or skip to next step if name is known.
taskkill /f /im notepad.exe (Forces the termination of the image name notepad.exe)
How does the motherboard's BIOS facilitate modern OS security through Trusted Platform Module and Secure Boot?
The BIOS contains the firmware for Secure Boot
What is a "control hazard" in CPU design, and how do modern processors use "speculative execution" to overcome it?
A control hazard occurs when the pipeline cannot fetch the next instruction because the previous instruction is a branch
As HDD areal density increases, magnetic bits become so small they face the large limit becoming thermally unstable. How does Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording solve this?
HAMR uses a small laser mounted on the read/write head to briefly heat the magnetic material on the platter just before writing
In a high-performance network server, explain the performance advantage of using asynchronous non-blocking I/O combined with buffering
The application tells the operating system to read/write data and immediately moves on to handle another user request, receiving a notification only when the operation completes.
Write a one-line command that checks if a directory named "Backup" exists; if it does not exist, create it, and then copy all .log files from the current folder into it.
if not exist "Backup" mkdir "Backup" && copy *.log "Backup"
(This uses the if not exist conditional, mkdir to create, && to chain the command, and copy with wildcards)