Computer Science (A Level)

H446/01, Computer systems, Practice

Learning Computer Science
OCR ExamBuilder process constraints mean you may
see slight differences between this paper and the
original. Duration: 150 mins

Candidates answer on the Question Paper.

A calculator may be used in this paper.

OCR supplied materials:

Additional resources may be supplied with this paper.

Other materials required:

• Pencil
• Ruler (cm/mm)

Candidate Candidate
forename surname

Centre number Candidate number

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
• Write your name, centre number and candidate number in the boxes above. Please write clearly and in capital letters.
• Use black ink. HB pencil may be used for graphs and diagrams only.
• Answer all the questions.
• Read each question carefully. Make sure you know what you have to do before starting your answer.
• Where space is provided below the question, please write your answer there.
• You may use additional paper, or a specific Answer sheet if one is provided, but you must clearly show your candidate number, centre number
and question number(s).

INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES

• The quality of written communication is assessed in questions marked with a pencil or an asterisk.
• The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.
• The total number of marks for this paper is 140.

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 Answer all the questions.

1(a). A company releases a utility called RAMStore. The utility creates a virtual storage drive from
an area of the computer's RAM.

Describe what is meant by the term utility software.

[2]

(b). Give one advantage of using RAM as storage in this way.

[1]

(c). The utility periodically copies what is in the RAM drive to secondary storage, such as a hard
disk. Explain why this is necessary.

[2]

(d). It is important that enough RAM is left for the operating system to use. Describe a technique
that allows operating systems to overcome a lack of available RAM.

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 [4]

2. * Modern computers tend to have magnetic or solid state (flash) hard drives. Discuss which
hard drive you would recommend for a keen video games player to use on their desktop PC.

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 [9]

3(a). Convert the unsigned binary number 11110000 to:

i. Denary:

[1]

ii. Hexadecimal:

[1]

(b). An AND operation with the mask 10101010 is applied to the binary number 01010101. Show
the result.

[1]

(c). An OR operation with the mask 10101010 is applied to the binary number 01010101. Show
the result.

[1]

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(d). 00001100 is shifted two places to the left.

i. Show the result.

[1]

ii. Identify what arithmetic operation this shift is equivalent to.

[1]

(e). Convert the denary number −8 to:

i. An 8-bit sign and magnitude binary number.

[1]

ii. An 8-bit two's complement binary number.

[1]

(f). A computer represents floating point binary numbers using a 6-bit mantissa and 4-bit
exponent, both using two's complement.
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 Add the following three numbers together and give the answer in the format described. You
must show your working.

[6]

4(a). Below are extracts from the ASCII and EBCDIC character sets.

ASCII

EBCDIC

Explain, referring to ASCII and EBCDIC, what would happen if computers were to use different
character sets when communicating.

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 [2]

(b). Write a function that given the denary value of an EBCDIC uppercase letter, returns the denary
value of an ASCII uppercase letter. If a value is entered that doesn't correspond to an
uppercase EBCDIC letter the function should return −1.

e.g.

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 endfunction
[5]

5(a). The following is a program written using the Little Man Computer instruction set.

Describe the difference between the STA and LDA instructions.

[2]

(b). Identify the type of memory addressing the program uses.

[1]

(c). State the output this program generates.

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 [3]

(d). Explain the buses and registers used when the line SUB one is executed.

[5]

(e). Explain, giving an example, how pipelining in a CPU could speed up the execution of this
program.

[3]

(f). Describe one issue the line BRP start may cause for a CPU using pipelining.

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 [2]

(g). Pipelining is one factor that affects the performance of a CPU. Identify one other factor.

[1]

6(a). A company is writing a syntax checker to be used when writing HTML.

The first thing the program does is add every tag in a piece of text to the data structure
.

The string X is added to with the code

The string type variable holds the code that is to have its tags added.

If htmlCode were to contain:

would have the following contents:

Write the code to fill with the tags in .

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 [7]

(b). Part of the program checks that the HTML tags are well formed.
Well formed HTML has tags that are nested but never overlapping.

e.g.
is well formed.

Whereas is not well formed as p

closes before the strong inside it has been closed.

All comments and single tags are removed from .

All attributes are removed from the within the tags.

i. The contents of may look similar to below:

Tags are removed from in the same order they were added.

Identify what type of data structure is.

[1]

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 is given a closing tag and gives the corresponding opening tag.

e.g.

ii. Identify what type of data structure is.

[1]

The following code is used to check if the tags are well formed.

iii. Identify what type of data structure is.

[1]

iv. Explain why is suited to checking if HTML is well formed.

[2]

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7(a). An XOR gate is shown below. Complete the truth table for XOR.

A B Q
1 1
1 0
0 1
0 0

[2]

(b). A set of logic gates are connected as below.

i. Complete the Truth Table below:

A B Cin S Cout
1 1 1
1 1 0
1 0 1
1 0 0
0 1 1
0 1 0
0 0 1
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 0 0 0

ii.
iii. [4]
iv. Explain what the circuit does. You should refer to A, B, C in, S and Cout in your answer.

[4]

(c). i. Write a Boolean expression equivalent to S.

[1]

ii. Write a Boolean expression equivalent to Cout.

[2]

8(a). A database stores information about songs on a music streaming service.

One of the tables called Song has the fields.

Explain why none of these fields would be suitable as a primary key.

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 [2]

(b).
Give one advantage and one disadvantage of indexing the field Artist.

Advantage

Disadvantage

[2]

(c). Users can build up playlists of their songs. Another table is created called Playlist.

Explain why a third table which we shall call PlayListEntry is needed. You should use an
ER diagram to illustrate your answer.

[4]

(d). A band called RandomBits removes their permission for their songs to be streamed.

The company removes all the songs belonging to RandomBits from their service.

i. Identify the law with which the company are complying.

[1]

ii. Write an SQL statement that will remove all songs by RandomBits from the table Song.

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 [2]

iii. When the songs have been removed, explain what must happen to the table
PlayListEntry if the database is to retain its referential integrity. (You are not
expected to write the SQL to do this).

[1]

9. * ‘Modern technology and UK laws mean privacy is dead.’

Discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement.

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 [12]

10(a). A software development company is building an operating system for a mobile phone that is in
the process of being designed.

Give one reason the phone needs an operating system.

[1]

(b). Explain how the developers could use virtual machines.

[2]

(c). One of the developers is responsible for writing the code for what happens when the CPU
receives an interrupt. Outline what the code must do.

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 [6]

(d). The developers follow the waterfall lifecycle.

i. List three stages of the waterfall lifecycle.

ii.

iii.

3 [3

iv. Justify why the waterfall lifecycle is suited to the development of the operating system.

[2]

v. Give one disadvantage of using the waterfall lifecycle to develop the operating system.

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 [1]

(e). * The code is written using an object-oriented programming (OOP) language. Discuss the
advantages and disadvantages to the team of developers of using OOP over procedural
programming. You should refer to inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism in your
answer.

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 [9]

11(a). A website has the following HTML code.

the site's owner wants to add the photo UKstamps.jpg in place of the comment

Write the code that should go in place of the comment

[2]

(b). Where the comment is, the site's owner wants to add the text:

Find out more about UK stamps as a link to the UK Stamp Collectors Guild website which has
the URL:

http:/ukstampcollectorsguild.co.uk

Write the code that should go in place of the comment

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 [2]

(c). The site uses styling set out as attributes in tags rather than a linked CSS file.

i. Give one disadvantage of this to the site's owner.

[1]

ii. Give one disadvantage of this to the site's visitors.

[1]

(d). The site needs a light green (web colour lightGreen) background.
Explain what change needs to be made to the current page in order to do this.

[3]

(e). The site's owner notices that his site doesn't come up high in the results from a search engine
that uses the PageRank algorithm. State what would affect his site's ranking.

[2]

END OF QUESTION PAPER

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