Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology

B. Sc Degree in IT/IS/CN, Diploma in Information

Technology
Year 1 – Semester 1 – 2009
Computer
Fundamentals (101)
Tutorial 1
Attempt following questions in 30 minutes.

1. Computer Organization
a. Draw a diagram showing the connection between the CPU and various
devices and their access to memory.
b. Describe in brief about the von Neumann Architecture with the aid of a
diagram.
c. Explain in brief about the functions of each part listed in the von Neumann
Architecture.

2. Data Types
a. What are the basic data types available to represent data in computers?
b. Give some examples for each data type you listed.

3. Number Representation
a. What are the different types of number representation methods available?
b. Identify mantissa/argument, radix/base and exponent giving an example.

4. Data Representation in Computers

a. Why is Binary representation chosen to represent data in computers?
b. What are the states that we are concerned in binary representation and
how can we map them to binary numbers?

5. BITS and BYTES

Computers are based on bits which have two possible states (0 or 1). Suppose a
new computer is invented that is based on "tri-its" (this is a made-up word). A tri-
it can have 3 possible states (-1,0,1).
a. How many pieces of information could be stored in a single tri-yte (1 tri-
yte = 8 tri-its)?
b. 16 bit color provides 216 = 65,536 different colors. How many different
colors could be represented using 16 tri-it color?
c. What is the minimum number of tri-its that would be required if you only
wanted to represent the same 65,536 that are available on a bit based
machine?

6. ASCII
a. How many characters are possible in ASCII?
b. If the ASCII code for the letter "A" is 65, what is the ASCII Code for the
letter "D"?
c. Use the ASCII chart from the lecture/text book to determine what bit
pattern is stored for the following characters assuming an 8-bit byte.
i. Z ii. z iii. 8 iv. %
d. Use the ASCII chart from the lecture/text book to determine what
character is represented by the following bit patterns?
i. 0011 0000 ii. 0100 0011 iii. 0111 1000
iv. 0010 1010

e. What are other character codes available?

f. What was the reason to select Unicode to represent characters?