REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROON REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON

PAIX-TRAVAIL-PATRIE PEACE-WORK-
FATHERLAND
MINISTERE DE L’ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERIEUR MINISTRY OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
COMMISION NATIONALE D’ORGANISATION NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE
ORGANISATION
DES EXAMENS OF THE EXAMS

National Exam of Higher National Diploma

Speciality/Option: Computer Science and Network
Paper: Computer Systems
Credits: 6 Duration: 3 hours

Instructions: Answer all questions

Section A: 40marks(1mark for each question)

1. The computer component that plays a role in the display of the computer system is called?
A) secondary memory
B) primary memory
C) tertiary memory
D) none of the above
2. The processing speed of a computer is measured in
A) kilohertz
B) megahertz
C) gigahertz
D) hertz

3. A routine check that will run when you powered on a computer is called:
A) BIOS
B) CMOS
C) NVRAM
D) POST
4. Which of the following is a type of computer motherboard bus?
A) straight line bus
B) circuit bus
C) control bus
D) none of the above
5. What is the full meaning of RISC?
A) registers instruction set complex
B) read instructions set cycle
 C) reduced instruction set computer
D) reduced instructions setting computer
6. What is the full meaning of CMOS?
A) complex metal semiconductor oxide
B) common metal of system
C) complementary metal oxide semiconductor
D) complex metal oxide semiconductor
7. In Von Neumann computer architecture,
A) the system and data buses are almost the same
B) the system and data buses are directly connected
C) the system and the data buses are separately interconnected
D) none of the above
8. The memory capacity in every computer is:
A) always a modulus of the address bus size
B) always a remainder of the address bus size
C) always a magnitude of the address bus
D) always a multiple of the address bus size
9. To install RAM sticks in the computer system:
A) hold it firmly on both edges and push into the slot
B) hold it firmly on the chip and push into the slot
C) hold it firmly with the two hands and push down into the slot
D) hold it firmly and push down into the slot
10. One method of erasing the content of a BIOS is by:
A) flushing
B) flashing
C) clearing
D) sparking
11. A soldered chip on the motherboard comprising of both software and hardware is called:
A) freeware
B) shareware
C) firmware
D) adware
12. The smallest logical storing capacity of an hard drive is:
A) bytes
B) sector
C) bit
D) cluster
13. The CPU communicates with the north bridge through
A) RAM bus
B) front side bus
C) PCI bus
D) ISA
14. Which of the following programming languages is closer to the machine language?
A) C programming language
B) C++ programming language
C) python programming language
D) assembly programming language
15. Which of the following is a computer motherboard form factor?
A) INTEL
B) AMD
C) ATX
D) Cyrix
16. Stack pointer points to the top of the current stack in
A) CPU
B) memory
C) PC
D) PSW
17. PSW stands for
A) Program Status World
B) Program Status Word
C) Program Status Wide
D) Program Status Wise
18. Ideally, a memory should be dirt cheap, abundantly large and
A) Extremely fast
B) extremely slow
C) USB
D) SATA
19. The memory content of EEPROM is erasable
A) Electrically
B) By UV
C) Automatically
D) none of the above
20. ISA stands for:
A) Industry Standard Area
 B) Industry Standard Architecture
C) Industry Standard Advanced
D) none of the above
21. In X86 Programming, which of the following is correct ?
A) BX is used to hold indirect addresses
B) BX is used to hold overflow in certain arithmetic operations
C) BX is used to count the number of iterations
D) BX is used to pass arguments on the stack
22. Which of the following MOV operations is not allowed in X86 Programming ;
A) MOV Reg, Reg
B) MOV Reg, Mem
C) MOV Mem, Mem
D) MOV Mem, Reg
23. A 20 bits Operating system can use a maximum of ;
A) 1MB of memory
B) 2MB of memory
C) 4MB of memory
D) 8MB of memory
24. The Boolean expression Q= AB + AB evaluates to
A) AB
B) A
C) A+B
D) None
25. Which of the following is considered as a universal gate ?
A) AND gate
B) OR gate
C) NAND gate
D) XOR gate
26. Which of the following is an example of a special purpose register ?
A) AX
B) BX
C) IP
D) SI
27. Which CPU feature enables the microprocessor to support running multiple operating systems at the
same time?
A) Clock multiplying
B) Caching
C) Pipelining
D) Virtualization support
28. Which feature enables a single-core CPU to function like two CPUs?
(a) Hyper-Threading
(b) SpeedStep
(c) Virtualization
(d) x64
29. In register addressing mode,
A) The instruction specifies the actual value to be used
B) The instruction specifies the address of the value to be used
 C) The instruction specifies the register containing the address of the value to be used
D) The instruction specifies the register containing the value to be used
30. A register (e.g program counter) in a computer system is found in:

A) motherboard
B) circuit board
C) monitor subsystem
D) central processing unit
31. What is the full meaning of CISC

A) complex instruction set calculator

B) complex instruction setting computer
C) complex institute setting cable
D) complex instruction set computer
32. A situation where the CPU is allowed to start a new instruction as soon as the previous instruction
reaches the next stage in the fetch/decode cycle is known as ;
A) Serial processing
B) Parallel processing
C) Pipelining
D) None of the above
33. What is the output of this X86 instruction shl AX,3 ;
A) AX*1
B) AX*3
C) AX*6
D) AX*8
34. Which of the following is not an example of a combinational circuit ;
A) Half Adder
B) Full Adder
C) Multiplexer
D) D flip-flop
35. What is the function of the address bus in the PC?
A) The address bus enables the CPU to communicate with the memory controller chip
B) The address bus enables the memory controller chip to communicate with the RAM.
C) The address bus provides a channel for the flow of data and commands between the CPU and
RAM.
D) The address bus enables the CPU to access registers.
36. What is the maximum cable length for USB 2.0?
A) 1.2 meters
B) 1.2 yards
C) 5 meters
D) 5 feet
37. In Harvard computer architecture data and instructions are:
A) stored on the same memory location
B) stored on the separate memory location
C) stored on both memory location
 D) partially stored on both memory location
38. The reason why core i processors are faster than dual core processors is because

A) core i is the most recent processor

B) dual core processors have only two processors
C) core i processors have the north bridge incorporated
D) core i processors have the south bridge incorporated
39. While the CPU is executing instruction number n, it could also be decoding instruction n + 1 and
fetching instruction n + 2 this technique is called:

A) Pipeline
B) superscalar
C) hyper-threading
D) none of the above
20. Which bus connects the CPU and level 2 cache;
A) Memory bus
B) Rear side bus
C) Front side bus
D) None of the above

Section B: 60 marks

I. Assembly Language programming

1. Give an example of each of the following Assembly language instructions indicating the opcodes and
operands: (5 mks)
a) Arithmetic instructions
b) shift instructions
c) Logical instructions
d) comparison instructions
e) jump instructions
2. In relation to Assembly language programming, fill the table below (5 mks)

Addressing modes Function Example

Register Addressing mode

Immediate addressing mode

Direct addressing mode

Direct Indexed addressing

mode

Based indexed addressing

mode
3. Write Assembly language instruction to add the values 7 and 9 and stores the sum in a register AX.
(2 mks)

II. Network Security

I. Define the following:
 Cryptanalysis (1 mk)
 Cryptography (1 mk)
 Integrity (1 mk)
 Non-repudiation (1 mk)
 Threats (1 mk)
 Attack (1 mk)
2. Consider the plaintext "HND is indeed professional”
a) Encrypt the plain text using Caesar cipher with key 5 cyclic shifts to the left. (6 mks)

III. Artificial intelligence and expert systems

1. Explain how the following Engineering applications are achieved using AI (4 mks)

a) Advanced Robots
b) Internet of Things
c) Image Processing
d) Natural Language Processing

2. Consider the graph below

Fig 1: A search graph

a) Perform the in-order traversal (2 mks)

b) Perform the pre-order traversal (2mks)
c) Perform the post-order traversal (2mks)
d) Perform a Breadth first search (BFS) to locate G (1mk)
e) Perform a Depth first search (DFS) to locate G (1mk)
IV. Human Computer Interface (HCI)

1. Explain how the users interact with the computers stating the different types of User Interfaces
(6mks)
2. List 3 input and 3 output devices useful in Human Computer Interface (3mks)
3. What is the role of device drivers in Human Computer Interface? (1mk)
4. Explain the meaning of morphing in Human Computer Interface (2mks)

V. Graphics design
1. What is the difference between vector graphics and raster graphics? (4 mks)
2. State and explain different types of primary and secondary colors (4 mks)
3. Graphic design can be image based or text based. Explain these types of graphics designs using
examples (4 mks)