Keith’s A+ BrainDump
After taking the A+ exam today (Aug 18 1998) I sat down in my car and wrote down everything that I could remember, and then some. Below are some of the questions that I encountered on both the Core and the Dos/Windows.
First off let me say that I was really expecting the Dos/Windows exam to be mostly about Windows 95. Boy was I surprised! At least 45% of the test was still about good old Dos and Windows 3.x. I’m lucky that Dos and Win 3.1 is what I cut my computing teeth on. As it was I only scored an 80% on this test, I was hoping to do better.
Well here goes,
CORE
1. You suspect that your automatic modem dialer is not working correctly. Which of the following commands will manually dial the number 123-4567?
(These are pretty close to the choices offered. The ATDT one might have been ATDL? Can’t quite remember, but it’s the one I picked)
2. What does an Inkjet printer use to deflect the flow of ink?
(one of the options was something about multidirectional nozzles)
3. What is the purpose of a Thermal Fuse?
4. What (lines?) does a serial connection need for handshaking.
5. In Windows 95 what can you use to repair fragmented data?
6. Which DOS driver is used to emulate expanded memory?
7. Which DOS driver can be used to create a temporary drive in memory? (pretty close)
8. Which is the easiest component to environmentally recycle?
9. Which item provides the most protection against ESD during troubleshooting?
10. Assuming a 3 jumper shunt, what is the highest number that can be made using the binary numbering system?
11. What is the best ground for a conductive work bench?
12. The tracks on a Hard drive are further divided into
13. Which processor uses slot 1?
14. Which processor uses Socket 7?
15. You get a call from a user complaining that his computer consistently locks up after only 5 minutes of operation. What is the possible cause?
16. What types of Cache memory are available on a Pentium Pro CPU?
17. What is the 36 pin connector is used for on an I/O card?
18. What is a common connector for a serial port?
19. Which type of PCMCIA card supports Hard Drives?
20. Where can PC card bus mastering be disabled?
There was one question on the standards for PC cards (pretty deep stuff) and another on how they are configured (software driver required)
21. A feature of EIDE is;
22. When is the potential for ESD the greatest?
There were 3 more questions similar to this one.
23. Which of the following can protect against power sags?
There were 2 more questions like this. One was: What can prevent loss of power during an outage? And the other one was about Surge suppressors
24.A customer calls and says that his monitor light is on but he has no display. His PC apparently seems to boot OK and is running. What is the first thing you would do?
25. How large is the reserved memory area?
26. Where are the Upper memory blocks located?
27. When measuring an unknown voltage you should always start with the meter on the _______ voltage setting to prevent damage to the meter.
There were two questions on fuse checking. One was with the meter set to 20K Ohms reading a good fuse what would the meter read. The other was with the same situation only the meter was set to 15k Ohms.
28. If a PC boots normally but you hear no beeps what could be the problem?
29. How may bytes in one Sector
(I believe these were the choices)
30. What is the one thing that all Viruses’ try to do?
31. What are the rules governing extended partitions?
32. What IRQ does COM 4 use?
33. What is the I/O address used for COM 3?
34. Which IRQ is commonly used by the Floppy drive controller?
35. What is the first step to be performed after installing a new blank hard drive?
36. A user calls and says his PC was working fine yesterday but he turned on this morning and he is getting an error that reads "Invalid System Disk". What could be the problem?
37. Where is the driver EMM386.exe usually loaded?
There were 3 other questions similar to the above.
38. You are going to be upgrading the company president’s computer. What is the first step?
39. After displaying the directory of a floppy disk, a different floppy is inserted into the drive. The contents of the original floppy continues to display regardless of the directory request on the other floppies placed in the drive. You remove the drive in question and install it into your test system, and it does not exhibit the problem. You should next replace the:
40. What component is most likely to cause a "parity error"
41. What command is used to reset a Modem?
42. What is not an example of a network?
There were 3 question involving a picture of a motherboard with arrows pointing to several spots on the board.
43. One was pointing to the CACHE
44. One was pointing to the Keyboard connector
45. The last was pointing to the CMOS Chip
46. What bus architecture is the fastest?
47. What is the cheapest way to access the Internet?
48. To find out how much and what type of memory available what command should you run?
49. Question concerning the different voltages provided by a PC power supply
(+12, -12, +5, -5)
50. When testing a fuse you should set the multimeter to what scale?
51. During the normal PC boot process, which of the following is active first?
52. What does Full Duplex mean?
53. Which part of the Laser printer should NOT be exposed to sunlight?
Well that’s all I could remember for that part (he he, good memory!)
DOS/Windows
This is more of an overview and not so much direct questions.
If you haven’t worked with DOS, Windows 3.1 or 95 you may as well forget this part of the test until you get some more experience.
GOOD LUCK!!!