CPSC 101A - Test #2 Topics
The test covers Sections 3.1 (some of this was on Test 1),
3.3 (Huffman encoding handout), 3.4, 3.5, Chapter 15,
Chapter 4 (omit multiplexers and circuits as memory - pages 107-108),
Color codes in HTML and attributes of HTML tags (lab
and p. 514 of the text).
Data Representation (Chapter 3)
- Know the difference between analog and digital data (in Section 3.1)
and how it relates to audio and images and how they are represented - know what it means to digitize data
- Know the difference between lossy and lossless data compression
(first discussed in 3.1 then related to image and audio compression)
- Know how to construct a Huffman code
- Be able to determine the amount of space taken up by a Huffman
code; be able to determine the compression ratio for a Huffman code
- Be able to decode using a Huffman code
- Understand the basic idea of representing audio data - how
sound is represented using sampling. Know the sampling rate needed to
create a reasonable reproduction of sound, how sound is represented
on an audio CD.
- Know the basic ideas of representing sound in the MP3 format -
know the specific lossy compression technique (perceptual encoding - be able
to describe what this is) and
the specific lossless compression technique used (what is this one?!)
- Know about color codes and RGB values. Understand HTML codes -
the code size, how it is represented in hexadecimal, what a specific
code such as 00FF00 or 8A0012 would mean.
- Know what each of the following is: pixel, resolution, raster
graphics format, vector graphics format.
- Know what a bitmap file (BMP) is and what compression technique
is often applied to a bitmap file.
- Understand the basic ideas of the GIF and JPEG (jpg) formats for
images - what type of images each is best for. Know what PNG is.
Networking (Chapter 15)
- Know what a computer network is. Know the terminology: node, host,
data transfer rate, bandwidth. Know the three types of wires that
provide physical connections (twisted pair, coaxial cable, fiber optic).
- Know the basic idea of a client/server model. Know what a
file server is and understand the
relationship to the Z drive at Roanoke College. Be able to list other
types of servers (web servers, email servers, etc)
- Know what LAN and WAN mean.
- Know what an ISP is and know the 3 popular ways to connect to the
Internet from home (through phone modem, Digital Subscriber Line - DSL, and cable modem). Know
which of these are considered broadband connections.
- Understand what a phone modem does - in particular be able to relate
it do the idea of analog and digital data. Know what the word modem
stands for.
- Understand the concept of packet switching.
- Know the role of routers in the transfer of data through a network.
- Know the difference between open systems and proprietary
systems. What is the advantage of an open system?
- Know the basic idea of the OSI Reference Model - know the basic idea of
the top layer and the bottom layer (that is, know what each of these
deals with). You do not need to know the names
of all the layers.
- Know what a protocol is and what a protocol stack is.
- Know what TCP/IP is - understand what each of these protocols deals with.
- Be able to give some examples of high-level protocols.
- Understand network addressing. In particular, know what each of the
following is: hostname,
domain name, top-level domain, IP address, domain name system, domain
name server.
Circuits and Logic (Chapter 4)
- Know what a circuit is and what a gate is.
- Know how to represent circuits in three forms: logic diagrams,
boolean expressions, truth tables (input/output tables)
- Be able to compute the input/output table for a circuit.
- Know what it means for two circuits to be equivalent. Be able to
show that two circuits are (or are not) equivalent.
- Given a logic diagram for a circuit be able to write the boolean
expression and vice versa (draw a diagram corresponding to a circuit).
- Know DeMorgan's Law and the Distributive Law. Be able to
use them to simplify boolean expressions.
- Know what a recognizer is.
- Be able to construct a circuit to correspond to a given
truth table; be able to construct a circuit given a description of
the output.
- Know what an integrated circuit is. Know what VLSI is.
HTML - Color Codes and Attributes (Lab handout plus p. 514 of the
text)
- Know what an attribute of a tag is.
- Know that align is an attribute you can use in many tags (we
used it in the heading tags such as H1 and in TD tags). The values
for align are "center", "left", "right".
- Know what the border, cellspacing, and cellpadding attributes
of a table tag do.
- Know how to specify the background color of an HTML element
using the bgcolor attribute of a tag (such as a TD tag to specify
the color of a cell in a table or the BODY tag to specify the
background color of the whole web page).
- You do not need to memorize how to create a table.