year 11 computing time: 1h 45min - curriculum.gov.mt

Computing – Year 11 – 2021 of 16

DEPARTMENT FOR CURRICULUM,

LIFELONG LEARNING AND EMPLOYABILITY

Directorate for Learning and Assessment Programmes

Educational Assessment Unit

Annual Examinations for Secondary Schools 2021

YEAR 11 COMPUTING TIME: 1h 45min

Directions to candidates:

Answer ALL questions on this paper.

The use of a flow chart template is permitted.

Calculators are NOT allowed.

Good English and orderly presentation are important.

For office use only:

QUES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Final

Mark

MAX 5 6 7 7 8 5 14 10 9 5 12 12 100%

MARK

of 16 Computing – Year 11 – 2021

1. AllSafe Insurance Ltd. is an insurance company which has recently installed a

new network system for all its employees working in the same building.

a. Which type of network was installed, a LAN, a WAN or a MAN? Give

ONE reason for your answer.

[1]

b. Mention TWO advantages the employees will experience at work with

the type of network you have chosen in question (a).

[2]

Advantage 1:

Advantage 2:

c. Many employees suggested teleworking, whereby they can work from

home.

i. Mention ONE network hardware that is required for teleworking. [1]

ii. Mention ONE way employees who are working from home can

meet online with their colleagues.

[1]

2. Teleskola.mt is a new website built to help students,

parents, guardians and educators to easily find online

lessons and learning resources.

Teleskola.mt runs on a dedicated server powered by Intel

Core i9-10900 10th Generation CPU to support its services.

This CPU has ten 2.8GHz Cores and 20MB Cache Memory.

a. What application is required to visit Teleskola.mt?

b. The entire development of a website, such as Teleskola.mt, requires

the expertise of different individuals. Give a brief description of how

the below roles are engaged in its development. One has been done

as an example.

Systems Analyst: [1]


Designer: Takes care of how the website looks, including the layout,

colour scheme, etc.

Programmer: [1]

c. What is the speed of the CPU in MHz? [1]

d. What is the effect of having a CPU with 20MB cache memory rather

than 10MB cache on the overall system performance? Explain.

[2]

3. To log in on Teleskola.mt, educators must enter their username and password.

Once logged in, they can add online lessons that include the lesson title, subject,

class year and description. When the lesson is submitted the lesson’s index,

author and date are automatically included.

a. One of the tables in Teleskola.mt is the Lesson table. Name ONE other

table you would expect to find in the system.

[1]

b. Complete the table structure of the Lesson table. The first one has

been done as an example.

Field Data Type

Lesson Index Autonumber

[3]

c. Which field links Lesson table with the table in your answer in part a? [1]


d. What type of relationship exists between the above-mentioned tables?

Explain.

[2]

4. Undoubtedly, the possibility of purchasing a 3D printer for

home and commercial use has made it possible to

manufacture one’s own designs.

a. What do CAD and CAM stand for? [2]

b. How are CAD and CAM related to 3D printing? [2]

c. The resolution of a 3D printer is measured in microns. The lower the

resolution, the less material is used to produce an object. A 10-

micron resolution is higher than a 150-micron resolution.

Which resolution, from the ones shown in bold, is ideally used to

manufacture:

i. a finalised custom-made trophy to be presented in an event?

ii. three different draft versions of the trophy to choose from?

Explain your answer.

[3]

i.

ii.

5. Serial and Direct are two methods of data access.

a. State whether the following situations require direct or serial access.

i. Withdrawing money from an ATM. [1]

ii. Producing monthly electricity bills for all customers. [1]

iii. Scanning items over a barcode at a supermarket. [1]

iv. Preparing all the University students’ stipends. [1]


b. Which of the following devices would be most suitable for:

Hard disk Magnetic tape DVD

i. Storing data in a stock control system: [1]

ii. Software distribution: [1]

c. In a stock control system, a message is displayed telling the user to

re-order if there are less than 15 items left in stock (stockLeft),

Complete the code.

[2]

if(_____________________________){

_____________________________ (“Re-order item”);

}

6. StitchIt Ltd., a leather manufacturing factory, invested in

automated cutting machines that work in batch

processing mode. These machines cut and trim unwanted

leather in batches of ten leather sheets at a time.

When the operator switches on the main switch, the

cutting machine checks if one batch of leather sheets has

been placed on the input tray and switches automatically

off when it cuts and trims the entire batch.

Create a flowchart that simulates the operation of the cutting machine by

using the symbols below.

[5]


Working space:

7. Software is usually coded in a high-level language, such as JAVA, but running it

involves translation to Opcodes and Operands that deal directly with the

hardware of the computer.

a. Explain the terms Opcode and Operand. [2]

b. Why does one Java language instruction correspond to more than one

low level instruction? Give ONE reason for your answer.

[1]

c. Check the below assembly code snippet and answer the following

questions:

1. LDA #6; load value 6 into accumulator.

2. MUL #4; multiply value in accumulator by value 4 and

store in accumulator.

3. STA result; store value of accumulator in result.


i. Write the equivalent of the above code in one Java statement. [1]

ii. In which step of the above code is the ALU involved? Explain. [2]

iii. From the above code, give ONE example of symbolic addressing

and immediate addressing.

[2]

Symbolic addressing:

Immediate addressing:

d. List whether the below statements are True or False.

i. The Address Space determines the amount of

memory locations that the CPU can locate.

[1]

ii. The Instruction Register stores the address of the

next instruction to be fetched from memory.

[1]

iii. The Accumulator stores the current instruction

being executed.

[1]

iv. The Program Counter is incremented before the

Control Unit fetches the required operands.

[1]

e. Scratch is a 4th generation programming language

(4GL). In which of the below listed situations would it

be more suitable than Java? Explain.

1. Developing a graphics card driver

2. Creating a Stock Control System

3. Developing a very simple game

[2]

8. Ubuntu is a version of Linux OS which supports a GUI.

Its minimum system requirements are the following:

Processor: 2 GHz dual core processor.

RAM: 4 GB RAM.

Storage space: 25 GB.

Graphics: 3D Acceleration with 256MB.


a. What is the main purpose of an Operating System? [1]

b. Name THREE important OS management features. [3]

c. UBUNTU is usually installed on desktop and laptop computers. Which

type of OS from the options below is UBUNTU? Tick the correct answer

and explain.

[2]

Single-programming Batch-Processing Multi-Programming

d. Would you expect Debian Linux, which is a CLI

Operating System, to require similar, higher or

lower specifications? Explain your answer.

[2]

e. Solid-State Drive (SSD) can be used instead of a traditional magnetic

hard disk (HDD) but uses electronic-based storage.

In a laptop with a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HDD, where would you expect

an OS to be installed? Explain.

[2]

9. Travelling abroad has never been easier with the

use of a navigation system. Modern navigation

systems have a battery-saver feature which

turns the screen to black & white mode if the

battery is less than 20%.

a. Name the sensor (input component) that

navigation system devices use to connect

with satellites to provide position, velocity

and timing information.

[1]


b. Mention ONE output device/component that one expects to find in a [1]

navigation system device:

c. How is the colour depth affected when the screen switches from colour

mode to black & white mode?

[2]

d. The below code snippet shows a decision statement that turns the

screen into black & white mode when the battery life is less than 20%.

- The method isBatteryLow(batteryLife), which is called in the

decision, checks the percentage of the battery life.

- The method darkMode(), which is called if the battery life is less

than 20%, changes the screen to black & white mode.

if(isBatteryLow(batteryLife) == true){

darkMode();

}

i.

Tick whether the method isBatteryLow(batteryLife) is a:

void method int method boolean method

[1]

ii. Tick whether the method isBatteryLow(batteryLife) accepts:

one int parameter

one parameter that MUST be called batteryLife

both of the above are true

[1]

iii. How would you declare method isBatteryLow(batteryLife)? [3]

10. A navigation system comes with inbuilt software. The software includes the:

- Operating System that allows the user to change the device settings such

as brightness and volume controls, and

- DriveSmart software which shows the maps and navigation mapping

(locations, directions, traffic conditions, etc.)

a. Is DriveSmart a system software? Explain. [2]


b. What type of software licence does one expect on a navigation

system? Explain your answer.

[2]

c. When purchasing a navigation system, users are encouraged to

register it online. What is the advantage of doing so?

[1]

11. Logic gates are building blocks of digital systems.

a. Give the symbol and the Boolean expression of the AND, OR and NOT

Gates.

[3]

AND OR NOT

b. For safety reasons, cars have a built-in circuit to detect if the

seatbelts are locked or not.

The car’s circuit makes a beeping sound (B=1) and lights up a symbol

on the dashboard (D=1) when the:

- engine is on (E=1) and

- weight on the driver’s seat is more than 10kg (W=1) and

- driver’s seatbelt is not locked (S=0).

i. Draw the truth table for this circuit. [3]

Space for Truth Table


ii. Design a logic circuit according to your answer in part b (i). [5]

Space for Logic Circuit

iii. How many inputs do you expect the circuit to have if it also

detects whether the passenger’s seatbelt is locked once a

passenger is in this seat?

[1]

12. Cars with a digital speedometer use 3 seven-segment displays to show the car’s

speed. The below diagram shows that the car’s current speed is 31km/h.

Display 1 Display 2 Display 3

Display is off 3 1

A 7-segment display displays all the digits from 0 to 9. It lights up different

segments according to the 7-bit binary pattern received. For example:

G F E D C B A Number

displayed

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Display is off

1 0 0 1 1 1 1 3

0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1

a. What speed would the speedometer display for the number 07416? [1]


b. The speed value is split into three digits. Each digit is assigned to a

display. For example, the speed 95km/h is divided into:

Display 1: Display is off

Display 2: 9

Display 3: 5

Convert your answer in part (a) into three 7-bit binary numbers.

[1]

c. The java code snippet below splits the speed value in three digits as

explained in part b. Analyse the code and answer the questions that

follow:

1 void splitSpeed (int speed) {

2 int x = 3;

3 if (speed < 10)

4 x = 1;

5 else if (speed < 100)

6 x = 2;

7 int[] speedArray = new int[x];

8 int index = x - 1;

9 while (speed > 0) {

10 speedArray[index] = speed % 10;

11 speed = int(speed / 10);

12 index--;

13 }

14 }

i. Indicate in which line we find the following: [4]

Array declaration

Loop

Variable initialisation

Arithmetic operation


ii. Complete the below trace table to:

- determine the length of speedArray, and

- the value in each index of speedArray.

Line of code speed x index speedArray

1 14 - - -

2 14 3 - -

3 14 3 - -

4 14 3 - -

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

[4]

iii. Why is line 8 required? [1]

iv. In which situation would x be 3? [1]

-- END OF EXAM --


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year 11 computing time: 1h 45min - curriculum.gov.mt

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