Cambridge International Examinations

Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Level

* 0 2 1 5 2 4 6 1 4 4 *

COMPUTER SCIENCE 9608/12

Paper 1 Theory Fundamentals May/June 2017
1 hour 30 minutes
Candidates answer on the Question Paper.
No Additional Materials are required.
No calculators allowed.

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Write your Centre number, candidate number and name in the spaces at the top of this page.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
You may use an HB pencil for any diagrams, graphs or rough working.
Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid.
DO NOT WRITE IN ANY BARCODES.

Answer all questions.

No marks will be awarded for using brand names of software packages or hardware.

At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

The maximum number of marks is 75.

This document consists of 13 printed pages and 3 blank pages.

DC (CE/FC) 129908/3
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1 Some shops belong to the Rainbow Retail buying group. They buy their goods from one or more
suppliers.

Each shop has:

• a unique shop ID
• a single retail specialism (for example, food, electrical, garden).

Each supplier has:

• a unique supplier ID
• a similar single specialism recorded.

Rainbow Retail creates a relational database to record data about the shops and their suppliers.

The entity-relationship (E-R) diagram for the relationship between the SHOP and SUPPLIER tables
is shown.

SHOP SUPPLIER

(a) Explain what the degree of relationship is between the entities SHOP and SUPPLIER.

...................................................................................................................................................

...............................................................................................................................................[1]

The database design is as follows:

SHOP(ShopID, ShopName, Location, RetailSpecialism)

SUPPLIER(SupplierID, SupplierName, ContactPerson, RetailSpecialism)

SHOP-SUPPLIER(ShopID, SupplierID)

The SHOP–SUPPLIER table stores the suppliers that each shop has previously used.

Primary keys are not shown.

(b) (i) Label the entities and draw the relationships to complete the revised E-R diagram.

SUPPLIER

[3]

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(ii) Complete the following table to show for each database table:

• the primary key

• the foreign key(s) (if any):
° Each table may contain none, one or more foreign key(s).
° For a table with no foreign key, write ‘None’.
• an explanation for the use of any foreign key.

Table Primary key Foreign key(s) Explanation

(if any)

SHOP

SUPPLIER

SHOP–SUPPLIER

[5]

(iii) The database designer has implemented SUPPLIER.ContactPerson as a secondary

key.

Describe the reason for this.

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[2]

(c) (i) Write an SQL query to display the shop ID and location of all shops with a ‘GROCERY’
specialism.

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[3]

(ii) The existing shop with ID 8765 has just used the existing supplier SUP89 for the first
time.

Write an SQL script to add this data to the database.

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[3]

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2 (a) The first column of the following table gives features of different types of printer.

Put a tick (3) in the cells to show which features describe a laser and an inkjet printer.

Type of printer
Laser Inkjet
Impact printer
Non-impact printer
Line printer
Page printer
[2]

(b) Two of the components of an inkjet printer are a stepper motor and a print head.

Describe how each component is used when printing a page.

(i) Print head ..........................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[5]

(ii) Stepper motor

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[2]

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(c) A student has an old working laptop computer. It has a small capacity internal disk drive with
almost all the storage space taken up by the operating system and application programs.

She needs to buy an external storage device to store her data files.

(i) List two suitable devices.

Device 1 ............................................................................................................................

Device 2 ............................................................................................................................
[2]

(ii) Describe one advantage of choosing one of the devices.

Advantage of choosing device 1 / 2 (circle)

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[1]

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3 (a) A computer has a microphone and captures a voice recording using sound editing software.

The user can select the sampling resolution before making a recording.

Define the term sampling resolution. Explain how the sampling resolution will affect the
accuracy of the digitised sound.

Sampling resolution ..................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................................................................

Explanation ...............................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................................................................
[3]

(b) The computer also has bitmap software.

(i) Define the term image resolution.

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[1]

(ii) A picture is drawn and is saved as a 16-colour bitmap image.

State how many bits are used to encode the data for one pixel.

.......................................................................................................................................[1]

(iii) A second picture has width 8192 pixels and height 256 pixels. It is saved as a 256-colour
bitmap.

Calculate the file size in kilobytes.

Show your working.

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[3]

(iv) The actual bitmap file size will be larger than your calculated value as a bitmap file has a
file header.

State two items of data that are stored in the file header.

1 ........................................................................................................................................

2 ....................................................................................................................................[2]
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4 (a) (i) Explain why a personal computer (PC) needs an operating system (OS).

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[2]

(ii) One of the tasks carried out by the OS is the management of the use of the processor.

Name and describe two other management tasks that the OS performs.

1 ........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

2 ........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................
[4]

(b) A user has the following issues with the use of their personal computer (PC).

For each case, state the utility software which should provide a solution.

(i) The user wants to send a large file as an attachment to an email. The user knows that
the recipient’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) has a limit of 2MB for file attachments.

Utility software solution: ................................................................................................[1]

(ii) The user is writing a book and is worried that the document files could get damaged or
deleted.

Utility software solution: ................................................................................................[1]

(iii) The computer has recently been slow to load large files. The user has deleted a large
number of small files to try to solve the problem. A friend has advised that there is a
procedure which should be regularly carried out to reorganise file storage on the hard
disk.

Utility software solution: ................................................................................................[1]

(iv) The user clicked on an attachment in an unsolicited email. Since then, the computer has
shown some unexplained behaviours.

Utility software solution: ................................................................................................[1]

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5 The following table shows part of the instruction set for a processor. The processor has one
general purpose register, the Accumulator (ACC), and an Index Register (IX).

Instruction
Op code Op code Explanation
Operand
(mnemonic) (binary)
Direct addressing. Load the contents of
LDD <address> 0001 0011 the location at the given address to the
Accumulator (ACC).
Indirect addressing. The address to be used is
LDI <address> 0001 0100 at the given address. Load the contents of this
second address to ACC.
Indexed addressing. Form the address from
<address> + the contents of the Index
LDX <address> 0001 0101
Register. Copy the contents of this calculated
address to ACC.
Immediate addressing. Load the denary
LDM #n 0001 0010
number n to ACC.
Immediate addressing. Load denary number n
LDR #n 0001 0110
to the Index Register (IX).
Store the contents of ACC at the given
STO <address> 0000 0111
address.

The following diagram shows the contents of a section of main memory and the Index Register (IX).

(a) Show the contents of the Accumulator (ACC) after each instruction is executed.

IX 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0

(i) LDD 355

Main
ACC .................................................. [1] memory
Address contents
(ii) LDM #355
350
ACC .................................................. [1] 351 86

(iii) LDX 351 352

353
ACC .................................................. [1]
354
(iv) LDI 355 355 351
ACC .................................................. [1] 356
357 22
358

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(b) Each machine code instruction is encoded as 16 bits (8-bit op code followed by an 8-bit
operand).

Write the machine code for these instructions:

LDM #67

LDX #7

[3]

(c) Computer scientists often write binary representations in hexadecimal.

(i) Write the hexadecimal representation for the following instruction.

0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0

.......................................................................................................................................[2]

(ii) A second instruction has been written in hexadecimal as:

16 4D

Write the assembly language for this instruction with the operand in denary.

.......................................................................................................................................[2]

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6 Downloading a file from a website is an example of a client-server application.

(a) Describe what is meant by the term client-server for this application.

...................................................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................................................................

...................................................................................................................................................

...............................................................................................................................................[2]

(b) The following sequence of steps (1 to 5) describes what happens when someone uses their
personal computer (PC) to request a web page. The web page consists of HTML tags and
text content only. Four of the statements from A, B, C, D, E and F are used to complete the
sequence.

A Browser software interprets the script, renders the page and displays.
B Browser software renders the page and displays.
C Browser software compiles the script, renders the page and displays.
D The web server retrieves the page.
E The Domain Name Service (DNS) uses the domain name from the
browser to look up the IP address of the web server.
F The web server sends the web page content to the browser.

Write one of the letters A to F in the appropriate row to complete the sequence.

1. The user keys in the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into the browser software.

2. ....................................

3. ....................................

4. ....................................

5. ....................................
[4]

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Question 6(c) begins on the next page.

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(c) The following web page used for data capture consists of:

• two text boxes for the entry of:

° a race runner’s ID code
° their finishing position in a race.
• a button that the user clicks to submit this runner’s result.

1 <html>
2 <head>
3 <title>Untitled Document</title>
4 <script language="JavaScript">
5
6 function myButton_onmousedown()
7 {
8 var Output1 = "Runner ID OK";
9 var Output2 = "ERROR – entry refused";
10
11 var Runner ID = document.forms["form1"]["txtRunnerID"].value;
12 // || in Javascript is the 'OR' operator
13 if (RunnerID.substr(0,3) == "VAR" || RunnerID.substr(0,3) == "CAM")
14 {
15 alert(Output1)
16 }
17 else
18 {
19 alert(Output2)
20 }
21 }
22 </script>
23
24 </head>
25 <body>
26 <form name = form1>
27 <label>Runner ID: </label>
28 <input type="text" name="txtRunnerID" >
29 <label>Position: </label>
30 <input type="text" name="txtPosition" size = "5" >
31 <p>
32 <label>Save data: </label>
33 <input type="button" name="btnSubmit" Value = "Submit"
34
35 onMouseDown = "myButton_onmousedown()" >
36 </p>
37 </form>
38
39 </body>
40 </html>

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(i) The developer has used three variables in the JavaScript code. State the identifiers
used.

1. ....................................

2. ....................................

3. .................................... [2]

(ii) The button has an event whose identifier is onMouseDown. When the mouse button is
clicked, some code is run.

State the line numbers which contain this code.

From line .................................... to line .................................... [1]

(iii) The JavaScript code uses a selection statement.

State the line number which contains its condition.

Line number: .................................... [1]

(iv) Describe the purpose of the validation check that the code performs.

...........................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................[1]

(v) Name and describe two other types of validation check which could be appropriate for
this data capture form.

Validation check: ...............................................................................................................

Description ........................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................

Validation check: ...............................................................................................................

Description ........................................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................................................
[4]

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