Computer Potpourri II Trivia Quiz

Answer: FPU Manifold

The Turing Machine is a hypothetical computer first proposed by the British mathematician Alan Turing in 1937. It is the basis for today's stored-program computer.

Charles Babbage designed the Babbage Analytical Engine during the 19th Century, and employed many of the same concepts used in modern computers.

CPU Overdrive is not a rock band. Many companies provide devices to make Intel x86 CPUs run faster than they normally do, usually by a technique called over-clocking.

Answer: Effect

Sometimes seen as MOSFET, this acronym stands for: Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor.

Answer: BASIC

The Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) assigns values to variables with the "LET" statement. Experienced BASIC programmers know, however, that one can omit "LET" and write the above statement as "A$=B$".

Answer: FORTRAN IV

Unlike the languages C or COBOL, FORTRAN does not require the programmer to declare all variables used in the program. If a variable is undeclared in FORTRAN, then it is assigned a default data type depending on the first letter of the variable name.

Variables beginning with I, J, K, L, M or N are of type INTEGER by default. All others are REAL by default. So, GOD is a REAL number variable unless the programmer declares it as an INTEGER in the program.

Answer: BCD

BCD stands for Binary Coded Decimal and is a standard for representing decimal numbers internally. FPU is a floating-point unit. UART is Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter, and MMU is Memory Management Unit.

Answer: Core

Core (an early type of Random Access Memory using magnetic rings) and many solid-state memories actually destroy the contents of a memory bit location when the data is read. The memory unit must write back the original value to the location when it passes the value to the requesting device.

Answer: Computer Sciences Corp.

Computer Sciences Corp. is a service company that helps other companies better use their computers. Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) was famous for its PDP and VAX line of computers. International Business Machines (IBM) should be known to all, and the Nippon Electric Co. (now known as NEC) has a long history of building computing devices.

Answer: NCR

NCR sold the 304. The memory banks, based on work done by their engineers during WWII on designing and building code-breaking machines for the German 4-wheel Enigma machines, were a key element to the computer's success.

Answer: False

The Arithmetic Control Unit (ACU) controls the arithmetic logic.

Answer: Bloom County

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