Category Archives: Revision

Prelim Breakdown

Have a look at the questions you got wrong  and prioritize your study.

Question Unit Topic
1 Computer Systems Peripherals
2 Computer Systems Data Representation
3 Computer Systems Data Representation
4 Computer Systems Networks
5 Computer Systems Data Representation
6 Software Development Design
7 Software Development Constructs
8 Software Development Constructs
9 Software Development Languages and Environments
10 Computer Systems Structure
11 Software Development SD Process
12 Software Development Languages and Environments
13 Computer Systems Peripherals
14a Software Development SD Process
14b Software Development SD Process
14c Software Development Standard Algorithms
14d Computer Systems Networks
15a Computer Systems Data Representation
15b Computer Systems Data Representation
15c Computer Systems Peripherals
15d Computer Systems Peripherals
16a Software Development Constructs
16b Software Development Constructs
16c Software Development SD Process
16d Software Development Languages and Environments
19a Computer Systems Software
19b Computer Systems Structure
20a Software Development SD Process
20b Software Development SD Process

Calculations in computer systems

I was sure I had this here already but I can’t find it.

Here are the main formula we used in the computer systems unit

  • Largest number with n bits = 2n-1
  • No of memory locations/different colours = 2n
  • Coloumn heading in a binary number at n bit =2n-1
  • Size of bitmap = no. of Horizontal pixels X no. of Vertical pixels X Colour Depth
  • No. of pixels = DPI X size in inches
  • Total storage capacity = no. of memory locations X location size.

You should also be able to convert from bits, Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes & Terabytes.

  • Bit= 1/0 (Binary digIT)
  • 1 Byte = 8 Bits
  • 1 Kilobytes= 1024 Bytes  (210)
  • 1 Megabytes= 1024 KB  (220)
  • 1 Gigabytes = 1024 MB  (230)
  • 1 Terabytes = 1024 GB  (240)

For colour depth

  • 8 bits = 256 colours (28)
  • 16 bits = High Colour 65,536 colours (216)
  • 24 bits = True Colour 16,777,216 colours (224)

Control Unit

O was asked this question today and I can’t help but feel that the pupil wasn’t happy with the answer. So here I go again.

The Control Unit is a sub part of the processor (along with ALU & Registers). It is responsible for the sequencing, decoding and it also synchronizes the execution of the program instructions.

I am not sure that you will be happy with this description so I went to find some support notes and an animation ( I even found it in scratch) to help you to visualise it.

I did find this video though that covers a range of topics.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/HEjPop-aK_w" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

So to sum up, the Control Unit, controls all operations of the CPU, It also controls the flow of data along the buses.