Computer Maintenance

Power Supplies
1. The current in a standard wall outlet is _________ power.
2. The computer runs on ________ power.
3. What component converts power from the wall outlet to the type of current needed by the computer?
4. How does the PC Power Supply take an incoming 110 volts and produce an output of 12 volts?
5. What are two problems that can result from having a bad power supply?
a. ______________________________________
b. ______________________________________
6. What component can store electricity even when the power is off?
7. What are the 4 primary components of a power supply?
a. ______________________________
b. ______________________________
c. ______________________________
d. ______________________________
8. What is the purpose of the power supply fan?
9. How does the Baby AT form cool the motherboard?
10. How does the ATX form cool the motherboard?
11. When the power supply is form factor AT, why should the PC be plugged in when working on it?
12. When the power supply

13. What is the maximum output voltage produced by a power supply for a PCs usage?
A. 5V AC
B. 5V DC
C. 12V AC
D. 12V DC
14. The PC power supply is known as which kind of power supply?
A. closed
B. switching
C. capacitor
D. conversion

15. How much input voltage do most power supplies accept?

A. 110V AC
B. 110V DC
C. 220V AC
D. 110V and 220V AC
16. Never test a power supply without doing which of the following?
A. ensuring that there is some demand
B. ensuring that there is some power
C. ensuring that there is no demand
D. ensuring that there is no power
17. A bad power supply often
A. creates problems that are solvable through software applications
B. creates problems that can only be pointed to the power supply
C. creates problems that are hard to pin on the power supply
D. creates problems that are easy to pin on the power supply
18. Which of the following internal power supply components is dangerous to touch?
A. Microfarad capacitor
B. Inverse capacitor
C. Macro capacitor
D. Fuse capacitor
19. Which of the following are primary power supply components?
A. power tester; pass-through connectors; power switch; voltage selector switch
B. power cord; pass-through connectors; power switch; voltage selector switch
C. power cord; pass-through connectors; power tester; voltage selector switch
D. power cord; power tester; power switch; voltage selector switch
20. Which of the following are the two popular form factors for power supplies?
A. AT and XT
B. ATX and XT
C. ATX and AT
D. AT and XTA
21. All of the following describes attributes of the ATX power supply except:
A. Cools the system by sucking air into the case
B. Power supply blows air straight onto the processor
C. Helps keep the case clean by pressurizing the inside of the case
D. You can feel the air blowing out of the fan in the back of the power supply
22. How are power supplies rated?
A. Watt capacity
B. Volt capacity
C. Watt usage
D. Volt usage
23. Which of the following is NOT a description of what a power supply does?
A. It converts AC to DC
B. It provides proper AC voltage to the CPU
C. It must provide a variety of voltages at different strengths
D. It must manage some power-related signals for the motherboard

24. The Baby AT power supply has which of the following motherboard connector(s)?
A. Two 20-wire connectors
B. Single 20-wire connector
C. Two 6-wire connectors
D. Single 6-wire connector
25. The ATX power supply has which of the following motherboard connector(s)?
A. Two 20-wire connectors
B. Single 20-wire connector
C. Two 6-wire connectors
D. Single 6-wire connector
26. How should AT power supply P8 and P9 connectors be connected to the
motherboard?
A. The P8 connector should be towards the back of the computer.
B. The P9 connector should be plugged into the motherboard first.
C. The black wires of P8 and P9 should be in the middle of the connector.
D. The red wires of P8 and P9 should be in the middle of the connector.
27. Which of the following types of power plugs is used to connect most hard drives and CD-ROMs?
A. Molex connector
B. Simplex connector
C. Serial connector
D. Berg connector
28. Which of the following types of power plugs is used to connect most floppy drives?
A. Molex connector
B. Simplex connector
C. Serial connector
D. Berg connector

Hard Drive
29. Explain what a hard drive is used for in a computer.
30. Define the following parts of a Hard Drive:
a. Cover mounting screw holesb. Spindlec. Read/Write headsd. Plattere. Actuatorf. Actuator Arm g. Base Castingh. Disk Platters31. In revolutions per minute (rpm), how fast do hard drives spin?

32. Flux is the ______________ ______________ ______________ in the media.

33. What is RLL?
34. What type of power connection do hard drives use?

35. There are two ways to measure the performance of a hard disk.
a. Data rate and seek time
b. Data rate and megabytes per second
c. Data rate and kilobytes per second
d. Data rate and disk rotation speed
36. The data rate is the number of bytes per second that the drive can deliver to the CPU. Common
rates are between
a. 5 and 40 kilobytes per second.
b. 20 and 40 kilobytes per second.
c. 5 and 40 megabytes per second.
d. 5 and 20 megabytes per second.
37. The seek time is the amount of time between when the CPU requests a file and when the first
byte of the file is sent to the CPU. Common times are between
a. 10 and 20 milliseconds
b. 3 and 5 milliseconds
c. 8 and 10 milliseconds
d. 40 and 60 milliseconds
38. In order to increase the amount of information the drive can store, most hard disks have
a. Larger platters
b. Faster disk speeds
c. Multiple platters
d. Smaller sectors
39. Tracks can be defined as
a. Concentric circles
b. Pie-shaped wedges
c. Contiguous bites
d. 64-byte segments
40. Sectors can be defines as
a. Concentric circles
b. Pie-shaped wedges
c. Contiguous bites
d. 64-byte segments
41. Low-level formatting a drive establishes (Choose two)
a. The tracks and sectors on the platter
b. The read/write ratio
c. The starting and ending points of each sector
d. Interleave
e. The file-allocation table

42. High-level formatting a drive (Choose two)

a. Writes the file-storage structures
b. Prepares the drive to hold files
c. Establishes interleave
d. The starting and ending points of each sector
43. A sector holds ______ bytes of user data.
a. 1024
b. 256
c. 128
d. 512
44.An interleave of 2:1 with 18 sectors would be
a. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.
b. 1, 10, 2, 11, 3, 12, 4, 13, etc
c. 1, 7, 13, 2, 8, 14, 3, 9, 15, etc.
d. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc