Some A+ Study notes.

(Please feel free to print out to carry with you on the road)

1.    PCI slots are white
2.    PCI most important of all buses
3.    PCI is the fastest bus
4.    What is the IRQ for a keyboard - 1
5.    What is the IRQ for a floppy drive - 6
6.    What is the IRQ for COM port 4 - 3
7.    What modem command dials a number - ATD or ATDT (T=tone dialing)
8.    What modem command hangs up the modem - ATH
9.    What modem command hangs up and resets the modem - ATZ
10.    What is first step in POST - program counter in CPU reset to F0000 and ROM BIOS checked
11.    What drive is confirmed with jumpers - SCSI
12.    Number of bytes in a sector - 512
13.    What cable has RS-232 connector - serial
14.    What is not a network - NAN
15.    Using single cable where is 2nd SCSI device connected - SCSI port of first SCSI device
16.    What is a 15-pin female connector used for - VGA monitors
17.    What voltage for a Pentium - 3.3 volts
18.    What part of a dot matrix printer may cause a burn to the tech - the print head
19.    What CPU has the math coprocessor built-in and disabled - 486SX
20.    What is the DMA channel for the floppy controller - 2
21.    Where do you find a resource conflict for a device - the resource tab of the properties of an item under the systems icon of the control panel
22.    What do you view in the resources tab - configuration of a component
23.    Load order - IO.sys, config.sys, MSDOS.sys, command.com, autoexec.bat
24.    MSDOS uses FAT 16
25.    W95 uses FAT 16
26.    W98 uses FAT 32
27.    Win.com starts W3.x
28.    XT (8086) handles 1 MB RAM
29.    286 handles 16 MB RAM
30.    386 handles 4 GB RAM
31.    Pentium handles 4 GB RAM
32.    Minimum requirements for W95 - 386, 4 MB RAM, & 20 MB HD
33.    Minimum requirements for W3.x - 286, 1 MB RAM, & MSDOS
34.    4 boot files - setuplog.txt, detlog.txt, netlog.txt, & detcrash.log
35.    3 things needed for networking - client, adapter, & protocol
36.    4 functions of a microcomputer - input, processing, output, & storage
37.    Binary numbers, leftmost is most significant, rightmost is least significant
38.    Binary numbers (L-R) - 128-64-32-16-4-2-1
39.    Faraday Cage - antistatic bag
40.    Work with right hand to route any shock away from heart (which is on left side)
41.    Power supply wires - yellow=+12v, blue=-12v, red=+5v, & white=-5v
42.    80386 operates at +5v
43.    80486DX first to operate at +3.3v
44.    The spots where the bus connectors are located are called - adapter slots
45.    PCMCIA cards - Type I - memory 3.3 mm, Type II - modems and adapters 5 mm, Type III - removable HD 10.5 mm
46.    USB can support up to 127 devices and has a 12 Mbps data rate
47.    Accessible memory is the lesser of the amount that can be installed on the system and what is addressable by the microprocessor
48.    Non-parity memory does not provide correction or error detection
49.    What is the fastest device you can access data in a PC - cache RAM
50.    What is the slowest device you can access data in a PC - floppy drive
51.    SDRAM can be accessed as fast as the motherboard speed
52.    L1=processor cache (internal)
53.    L2=motherboard cache (external)
54.    A battery on the system board provides power to CMOS when the computer is off in order to keep configuration information
55.    Interface cables - floppy-34 pin, IDE-40 pin, SCSI-50 pin, & SCSI Ultra wide-68 pin
56.    IDE can have 1 or 2 channels (controllers). For 1 channel - master & slave, for 2 channel - Primary master & secondary master
57.    SCSI up to 7 devices connected in parallel format, daisy chained with 50-pin straight ribbon cable
58.    SCSI ID - 0=bootable drive, 7=controller, 1-6=any other devices
59.    SCSI 3 ultra-wide - 16 devices, 0=bootable drive, 15=controller
60.    2 biggest problems with SCSI - each drive must have a unique number & the SCSI bus must be terminated at each end of the chain
61.    RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks
62.    RAID 1 - disk mirroring (2 drives with same exact data
63.    RAID 5 - striping with parity; minimum 3 devices, maximum 16
64.    Interlaced monitor - skips every other line during scans
65.    Non-interlaced - scans all lines in one pass eliminating flicker
66.    CGA - 640x200, EGA - 640x350, VGA - 640x480, SVGA - 800x600
67.    Serial cable maximum length is 50 feet (longer lengths cause com errors & garbage characters)
68.    Parallel cable maximum length is 10 feet
69.    Centronix IEEE 1284 is standard for parallel printing
70.    Centronix connector is 25-pin D-shell
71.    9-pin male connector on system board is serial and usually COM 1 (mouse)
72.    25-pin male connector on system board is serial and usually COM 2 (modem)
73.    25-pin female connector on system board is parallel and usually LPT 1 (printer)
74.    The default connection for a mouse is COM 1
75.    COM 1 & COM 3 share the same IRQ
76.    Most modems operate asynchronously
77.    New standard for modems is v.90
78.    Modular jacks - RJ-11=2 pair (4 wires), RJ-14=3 pair (6 wires), & RJ-45=4 pair (8 wires)

79.    DMA

0    Available (ISA/AT and above)
1    HD controller (XT Only) Available for ISA/AT
2    Floppy controller
3-7 Available

80.    XT's have only 4 DMA channels (0-3)
81.    ISA, MCA, & EISA have 8 DMA channels (0-7)
82.    IRQs

0    0    System Timer
1    Keyboard
2    Cascade from IRQ 9
3    COM 2, 4, 6, & 8
4    COM 1, 3, 5, & 7
5    LPT 2 (but usually sound cards)
6    Floppy controller
7    LPT 1
8    Real time clock
9    VGA, NIC (works better on 10 or 15), redirect to IRQ 2
10    Available
11    Available
12    Available
13    Math coprocessor
14    HD controller (ISA, AT)
15    Available

83.    I/O addresses

1F0 - 1F8    AT disk controller
2F8 - 2FF    COM 2
3F8 - 3FF     COM 1
378 - 37F    LPT 1
378 - 37A    LPT 2
3C0 - 3DA     VGA adapter
3F0 - 3F7    Floppy controller

84.    Memory addresses

A0000 - AFFFF    EGA adapter
A0000 - BFFFF    VGA adapter
B8000 - BBFFF    CGA adapter
C8000 - C8FFF    Disk controller
F0000 - FFFFF    System BIOS

85.    3 components necessary for Plug and Play - PnP BIOS, PnP expansion boards, PnP operating system
86.    Ohm’s Law - V=IR (I=current in amps, V=volts, R=resistance in ohms)
87.    What is used to test the connection between computer and modem - analog loopback test
88.    The 6 step Electro Photo static (EP) process - (ccwdtf) cleaning, conditioning, writing, developing, transferring, and fusing
89.    During conditioning the corona wire applies a uniform negative charge to the drum
90.    During transferring the transfer corona applies a strong positive charge to the paper