Task 1
A practical task specified in the Study Guide, Computer architecture, was to record your computer’s specifications. Submit the data you recorded, which will contain the following data items:
• Operating system name and version
• BIOS brand and version
• Processor(s) type and identifier
• Total physical memory and total virtual memory
• Capacity of Hard Disk Drive(s) (HDD)
• Amount of free HDD space
• Graphics card and amount of memory
• Display resolution and maximum display resolution
Task 2
A practical task specified in the Study Guide , Number systems, was trivially using openSUSE Linux. For this you took a screen shot of your host operating system desktop showing the openSUSE desktop in the running virtual machine. Submit that screen shot as the answer to this question.
Task 3
1. Calculate the binary representation using an 8-bit, two’s complement system of each of the following decimal integers: -64, -1, 15 and 77. You can check your answers using the Windows calculator, but you should show the steps you have used to obtain your answers.
2. Consider a BMP file that holds a screen image at 1280 x 1024 pixels resolution. How large would the file need to be if
a. it represents a black and white image;
b. it represents a colour image using RGB encoding?
Task 4
Describe what occurs in the fetch-execute cycle of a von Neumann machine. Explain what part the system clock plays in this and how this has limited improvements in the performance of processors. (Half a page plus references expected)
Task 5
Write the Boolean expression and construct the truth table for the circuit diagram given below.
Task 6
Convert the characters in the following string into ASCII code represented in hexadecimal.
Question: 2B or not 2B?
Check your conversion using the od command in openSUSE Linux. For this you will need first to create a file containing the above sequence of characters. Then apply the od command to that file using appropriate options, as specified in the system manual. As the od command has suffered some changes in moving from UNIX to Linux, with some resulting obscurities in the manual, it may help to tell you that appropriate options are
-t x1
This stands for (t)raditional, he(x)adecimal, and with units of (1) byte.
In your assignment submission, provide your conversion of the string and a screen shot of the openSUSE desktop showing a terminal window containing the od command and its output. You may need to use the zoom facilities of the terminal window’s View menu.