Joshua Kellogg
6/18/05
Homework Exercises
Chapter #1
2. First generation computers were big in size and they consumed massive amounts of power and generated lots of heat. Plus they were expensive.
3. Second generation computers used assembly language instead of machine language. With assembly language a person could use words instead of 1’s and 0’s. With Fortran and Cobol, one would use simple English like statements.
5. Microcomputers are also called personal computer. They have a small to medium data storage capacity and limited processing power. They are used for gaming and the internet and word processing.
6. Minicomputers perform better and are larger in size. They possess large storage capacity and support faster peripheral devices. Minicomputers are used to control and monitor production processes, analyze results of experiments in laboratories for example.
7. Supercomputers are the fastest and most expensive computers. They are usually interconnected by hundreds of microprocessors and making them function in parallel. They can perform billions of calculations per second.
8. Mainframes are used by connecting other computers to it to share resources. They have large storage capacities and can support thousands of users. Mainframes are used for data processing in large organizations.
9. Analog signals vary continuously. They are uninterruptible and can have any value within a specific range. Digital can only have two discrete values, low or high
10. The truth table is a table containing all possible inputs to the operator and the corresponding outputs.