Mike's A+ Core exam guide This guide is based upon the syllabus < 31st July 1998. After this date the syllabus will change and cover such areas as Win 95, but the vast majority of this information will still be of use to you. I have not mentioned the basic stuff like PC components and common sense safety issues etc. - I have just noted the things which may require a bit more understanding to pass the exam. ESD - Electrostatic discharge - know how to earth safely! How to use ESD kit. ESD wrist strap contains current limiting resistor which will discharge static but stop fatal currents coming through. EMI - Electromagnetic interference - know what it is and what causes it - how can you cut it down? Processors - Clock speed, Caches, Address lines, Internal data path, External data path, Math's Co-Pro's. Different Intel processors up to Pentium 200 MMX. Motorola chips up to 68040. PowerPC. BUS Architecture - functions of the BUS (data sharing, addressing, power & timing). BUS types (ISA, MCA, EISA, Local BUS, PCI, PCMCIA & SCSI). PC System Memory - RAM (SRAM & DRAM). DIPPS/SIPPS/SIMMS. Parity. ROM. Cache & Virtual memory. Disk Drives - floppy disks, CD-Rom, Hard Disk interfaces (ST506, ESDI, IDE, EIDE & SCSI). Hard disk characteristics. RAID. (level 0 - striping without parity, level 1 - mirroring / duplexing, level 2 - striping with Error Correction Code, level 3 - striping with a dedicated parity disk, level 4 - independant data disks with shared parity disk, level 5 - independant data disks with distributed parity blocks "strping with parity") System Resources - Interrupts (IRQs): 0 - system timer 1 - keyboard 2 - second IRQ controller 3 - COM2/COM4 4 - COM1/COM3 5 - LPT2 6 - Floppy disk 7 - LPT1 8 - Real time clock 9 - Software redirected to IRQ2 10 - spare 11 - spare (adaptec SCSI / BUS mouse) 12 - spare 13 - co-processor 14 - primary PCI hard driver 15 - secondary PCI hard drive DMA 0 - 7, I/O addresses, memory addresses (system devices A000-FFFF). Plug & Play. Upgrading a PC - setting up SCSI (host adapter ID=7, bootable drive = 0). adding memory. adding IDE drive. upgrading processor. Power Supplies - converts 240v AC to 5v & 12v DC. Av. PSU rated at 200-300 Watts. Monitors - display adapters - Monochrome to SVGA. VRAM. Printers - Dot Matrix, Ink Jet, Laser. Parallel ports. Printer Command Languages. Local Area Networks - types of LAN (server based / peer to peer). LAN topology (star, bus & ring). Network cabling (twisted pair, coaxial, fibre optic). NICs. Ethernet/Fast Ethernet/Token Ring. Extending the LAN. WANs Customer Service(pretty much common sense - escalation means passing inquiry on to more knowledgeable party). Bits & Bytes - be familiar with the basics. Apple Macintosh - adding memory to a MAC. Largest SIMM in bank A. Always completely fill a bank with the same specification SIMMs. Bomb window means MAC has crashed. Computer ports - symbols - know the various icons used to indicate the ports on a PC such as serial, parrellel, SCSI, keyboard etc. etc. etc. Fire extinguishers - Class A = ordinary combustibles (wood, cloth etc.) (water based). Class B = flammable liquids. Class C = Electrical equipment. Class D = burning metals. Handling CRTs (monitors) - never handle by neck. CRTs hold charge even when they have been powered off for some time - it can discharge 30,000 volts which is fatal. What is PCMCIA? Type 1,2 & 3 Laptop battery life Advanced Power Management (APM) Use of Test Meters (current / voltage / resistance). Power (Watts) = Voltage * Current (Amperes). Resistance = Voltage / Current Capacitors - capacitance is measured in Farads. Reservoir capacators hold charge for a long time (CRTs) Mains Current & Power supplies - AC / DC. PSUs. When testing a PSU there must be a load attatched. AC to DC conversion is known as Rectification. Power Problems - Spikes, Sags, Brownouts & Blackouts. UPSs (online & offline). Data Cabling - parrallel cables, serial cables, null modem cables, SCSI cabling. Modems - Asynchronous & Synchronous operation. Modem speeds (bps). Error detection (parity / checksums / CRCs). Handshaking (hardware/software XON,XOFF). FAX class 1 & class 2. AT command set (ATA, ATD, ATDT, ATDP, ATH, ATZ, +++AT. Loopback tests (analogue / local digital (requires 2 modems where remote modem sends test data - remote digital loopback test is inverse). UARTs. - it is not necessary to know every detail mentioned above - the pass mark is 72% so you can afford a few mistakes, but be aware of all of those concepts then you can still make an educated guess because it is multiple choice after all! Mike's Core exam braindump (Mike Webster 7/7/98) Exam taken 7/6/98 11am. Score 93. Passing score 72. For this exam it is required to obtain a score of 72 or better and there were a total of 61 questions (of which the last 4 were demographics like the dos & windows exam and are not scored - so in actual fact you are doing 57 questions). The sections are broken down as follows: Configuring Microcomputers 11 Installing & Upgrading 10 Diagnosis 14 Repair 13 Preventive Maintenance 4 Safety 5 The areas/questions I can remember are: -Learn about ESD & EMI (how to ground oneself safely) -Which component is most effected by EMI (CRT) -What you should do if screen display is wobbly (check surrounding equipment for EMI discharge) -Learn what to use to clean different components. -SCSI device IDs -What driver CD-Rom requires to function (MSCDEX) -Mac memory (lowest number in ns = fastest memory) -Mac software crash = bomb on screen -Which is fastest drive for full screen video (SCSI-2) -What part will not cause a paper jam in a laser printer -IRQ 1(keyboard) cannot be used by other devices -What is network adapters I/O address -What causes hard-drive light to remain on even though system is not booting (faulty I/O controller). -What causes a blank screen (monitor power light is on) -What do you do if PSU fan fails? (replace PSU) -What is best way to diagnose a blank screen is caused by hardware/software? -What is CD-Rom normally set to on IDE (slave) -What is most likely cause of mouse not working(conflicting network card) -How long should you wait for servicing a CRT after powering down (60 minutes) -When should you discharge a CRT capacitor (before servicing an internal component) -To which port should you connect an external modem (asynch port) -How can you avoid a power sag (use battery back-up) -What should you set a multimeter to to test a fuse -If you have a 2A fuse and you set your multimeter to 20K Ohms what display will you get -What voltage does the internal CPU logic use (5V) -What files does Win3.1 need to load (himem.sys) -what is this symbol __|__ .------ ..---- ...-- ... I found the exam harder than the DOS/Windows elective because the questions are more open to interpretation. There are quite a few questions which ask which is the first or best solution to choose where all of the solutions are feasible. The good thing is that on the multiple-multiple choice it states how many answers you need to choose so that can make it a bit easier to narrow down the correct answers. The areas that caught me by surprise were the "cleaning" questions - there were 4 in total and I did not know the correct answers. The other thing that I was not expecting was to name the I/0 address for a network card. Aside from those two areas, there were no surprises, but the wording requires very careful attention because it is important to understand what they are actually asking. It can be easy to rush an answer because the previous few were all obvious ones and then you find yourself selecting the next obvious answers when on closer inspection you find that is not correct. Again, there appeared to be plenty of time to complete the questions and check them out again (there was one hour to do the exam but this was more than enough). There were no questions which required any calculations or writing. Although there is a DOS/Windows elective, there is still overlap in both, with a few basic DOS/Windows questions in this exam and vice versa in the other one. Understand laser printers well and cleaning and the rest is pretty standard stuff. Before July 31st there is no Win95 and no networking! A+ DOS/Windows elective Braindump (Michael Webster 2/6/98) Exam sat 2/6/98 10am. Passing score 69 required - 88 obtained. There were 49 questions in total although the last four are merely for statistical purposes and are not marked (i.e. in what area do you work, how long have you been servicing PC's etc.). In reality there were 45 questions to do in 50mins. You probably won't need anywhere near that much time. There are four broad sections: Configuring Microcomputers (12 questions) Installing & Upgrading ( 8 queations) Diagnosis (14 questions) Repair (11 questions) ----------------------------------------- Total (45 questions) The questions were mostly answered by one choice with only a few being the multi-choice type. The DOS and Windows questions are mixed up. Questions that came up (which I can remember!): ----------------------- What uses IRQ6? What uses IRQ3? What does TSR stand for? What files can be loaded in Autoexec.bat What files can be loaded in Config.sys The PC startup sequence What has the fastest data transfer speed - rom,ram,cd-rom,hard-drive? What interface supports external CD-Roms? What to check if an external drive is not working? PCMCIA - what it is / what it requires to work? MEM - what is it for? - use MEM /C to check TSR's How to change file ATTRIButes? Windows Icon properties. How to make a bootable disk? What can virusses affect? What to upgrade if an EIDE drive is required? What to replace if directory is not updated when changing floppy disks? Where is the BUFFERS parameter kept? If a program requires more files to be open than are currently possible, what parameter should be changed? What file is used for diskcaching? (how do you disable write caching / how do you enable double buffering) What does SHARE do? Quite a few questions on memory - such as: How to get expanded memory? Know that it is EMS. How to get extended memory? Know that it is XMS. How to put DOS into High Memory? Where is High Memory located? Where is convential memory / how much? Where is upper memory / how much? What files would you back up if you wanted to keep your program group settings (win.ini, system.ini & .grp files). ------------------- For revision, the best method is practice: Be familiar with DOS. Go through all of the major commands - use /? after them to see the syntax of all of the parameters. For WIN3.1 - try to remember what you used to do (if like me you don't have access to it anymore!). Look at the WIN/? parameters. Know what the .INI files are for. Check out the IRQ's anyway because I had a couple of questions on them Also SCSI, EIDE & PCMCIA. Good luck! What you should know for the A+ Exams Nothing on Windows 95, everything on my exam pertained to Windows 3.1and DOS. Safety procedures on CRTs - discharging, working on, dangers (do's and don'ts) Data paths and numeric processors on all CPUs. What class of fire extinguishers do you need for PCs. (Rob, where were you when needed you?) Process for preparing a hard drive for use. How to create a permanent swapfile and what it is. Know ESD and EMI - how and where they are produced and how to prevent them. ESD and grounding. Be able to identify by sight all ports on a computer - know what each ones is used for and corresponding IRQs. Know what components are FRUs. Know details on using smartdrive, fdisk, mscdex, attrib and format. What devices hold a charge. How to tell tell a good fuse from a bad using a VM. Using a VM. Startup options for DOS. Basic modem AT commands. Basic modem signals. IRQs. and the difference between IRQs. on ATs and XTs. What's a TSR. What do you clean the different parts of dot matrix printers, laser printers and computers with. Know what's in ROM. Know what's hot and what's not in dot matrix computers. What components in a printer is sensitive to light. SCSI addressing and termination. IDE setup and configuration - older BIOS problems. What functions the POST performs. Power supply installation and troubleshooting. Ribbon cable installation. CMOS settings, loss and basic troubleshooting. When you enter any command, what happens. Know how the system files are loaded. Know how command.com loads and error messages. Loading DOS in upper memory. What is himem.sys and how is it used. Where do you load mouse drivers. Basic troubleshooting on dot matrix and laser printers. Basic cables and connectors. Basic binary and reading binary switches. Laser Printer Overview Laser printing consists of six progressive stages: 1. Cleaning During the first stage of the image formation process, a photosensitive drum's surface is prepared to hold an image through a physical and electrical cleaning process. Before a new image is formed on the drum, leftover toner from the previous image must be removed. This is accomplished by a rubber cleaning blade which scrapes toner off the drum into a debris cavity. The drum is also electrostatically cleaned by erase lamps which illuminate the drum's photosensitive material to neutralize any electrical charges that remain on the drum. 2. Conditioning After the photosensitive drum has been physically and electrically cleaned, it must be conditioned. The conditioning process consists of the application of a uniform negative charge on the surface of the photosensitive drum by the primary corona wire. A high negative voltage is applied to the primary corona wire by the high voltage power supply. Negative charges from the wire migrate to the surface of the drum. The primary corona grid is positioned between the primary corona and the drum's surface to regulate the voltage applied to the drum so that a uniform negative charge is applied. 3. Writing After rotating past the conditioning station, the drum has a uniform high negative charge on it's surface. At the writing station, a sweeping laser beam is used to discharge this potential in selected areas by focusing laser light on selected portions of the photosensitive drum. This creates what is known as an electrostatic image. This image is later developed into a visible image. Portions of the drum not exposed to the laser still have a high negative charge. 4. Developing At the developing station, the invisible electrostatic image is developed into a visible image on the photosensitive drum when toner from a developer cylinder is transferred to discharged areas on the drum. The toner particles acquire a negative charge from the developer cylinder which is connected a negative DC power supply. This electrostatic charge causes the toner particles to be attracted to the areas of the drum which have been exposed to the laser light and repelled to the areas not exposed. An AC potential is applied to the developer cylinder to assist the attraction of the toner from the developer cylinder to the photosensitive drum. 5. Transfer At the transfer station, the toner image on the photosensitive drum is transferred to the paper. A corona wire is positioned behind the paper so that the paper, which is traveling the same speed as the drums surface is rotating, contacts the drum. This corona produces a positive charge on the paper. Because the positive charges on the paper are stronger, they pull the negatively charged toner particles off the drum and on to the paper. As the paper and drum advance, a row of metal teeth with a high negative charge called the static charge eliminator weakens the attractive force between the negatively charged drum and the positively charged paper. This helps separate the photosensitive drum and paper. 6. Fusing Until the paper reaches the fusing station the toner is held on the paper only by gravity and weak electrostatic forces. At the fusing station, toner is melted and forced into the paper by pressure and heat of the fusing roller to producer a permanent image. The heat of the fusing roller is maintained by a high intensity lamp inside the fusing roller. At this point the finished print is ejected and the process is restarted from stage one. A+ EVALUATION EXAM Get out a sheet of scratch paper and prepare to answer the following 20 questions. When finished, check your answers below. Each question is worth 5 points. Good luck! 1. This is a method of compression of data within the hard disk drive. An example is MFM or RLL. 2. Software or firmware embedded in chips on the circuit board which determines compatibility. Examples are IBM, Compaq, AMI, Award, and Phoenix. 3. The design of the ISA bus only allows for support of16 MB of memory. If that is the case, how can a computer support 64MB of memory? 4. Hard drives start out essentially blank. They need to have their sectors defined on each track. In addition, the sectors have to be marked so that data can later be found and retrieved. This process is called 5. LPT2 uses what I/O address? 6. What are I/O addresses and what do they do? 7. To clean up the noise in keyboards and prevent stray electrical signals from sending false signals to the CPU, a process known as __________ is used. 8. An error detection technique consisting of a cyclic algorithm performed on each block or frame of data by both sending and receiving modems. 9. When using the PROMPT command, the variable "$Q" displays 10. To obtain a directory listing of unsorted filenames in lowercase, type: 11. SMARTDrive can provide double-buffering to devices such as SCSI drives, which are unable to work with virtual memory. To enable double-buffering, what statement needs to be added to the CONFIG.SYS file? 12. How many programs may reside in the HMA? 13. This file performs the control and allocation of system resources. It is responsible for tasks such as memory management, launching applications, and controlling program execution for multitasking. 14. These are executable code modules that can be called by Windows operations, or by application programs, to perform specific functions. 15. This step of the EP process puts a uniform negative charge on the drum, erasing the electrical image of the previous page. 16. Serial cables can be longer than parallel ones, with the maximum recommended length for a serial cable being ___ feet and parallel being ___ feet. 17. This topology uses a hub instead of a single trunk cable. Individual workstations extend from the hub, each connected by its own cable. Signals are broadcast to all stations or passed from station to station. 18. How many tranceivers can be integrated onto a Thicknet backbone? 19. When the PC is turned on, the program counter in the CPU is reset to location ____. 20. Consider the following scenario: You are looking at a laser printer that prints perfectly formed letters that smear easily. Using what you know about the EP process, what assembly would you suspect? ANSWERS TO A+ EVALUATION EXAM Each correct answer is worth 5 points. If you score 85% or higher, your in pretty good shape. If you score lower than 85%, my A+ STUDY GUIDE can help you improve your score. Remember the study guide has over 800 questions! 1. Hard Disk Encoding 2. BIOS 3. It is accomplished by page swapping. 4. low-level formatting. 5. 278 - 27F 6. Ports that allow communication between the device and the CPU. 7. Debouncing 8. Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) 9. an Equal sign (=) 10. DIR /L 11. DEVICE=C:\path\SMARTDRV.EXE /DOUBLE_BUFFER 12.One at a time. 13. Kernel file (KRNL286.EXE or KRNL386.EXE) 14. Dynamic link libraries, identified by their .DLL extension 15. Conditioning 16. 50, 10 17. Star 18. 100 19. F000 20. The fuser unit.