SLR 1.7 Systems software Flashcards
What is an input device?
Any peripheral device that can accept data, presented in the appropriate machine-readable form, decode it and transmit it as electrical pulses to the CPU
Name three input devices
keyboard, mouse, keypad, card reader, barcode scanner, proximity sensor, foot-mouse, puff-suck switch,, etc.
What is an output device?
Any peripheral device that translates signals from the computer into a human-understandable form, into a physical action, or into a form suitable for reprocessing by the computer at a later stage.
Name three output devices
screen, printer, speaker, plotter, motor, actuator, etc.
What does OS stand for?
Operating System
What is an Operating System?
A collection of systems software that manages the computer. Usually supplied with the computer. Most common operating systems are Windows, Linux, Unix, MacOS, iOS.
What is ‘main memory’?
Random Access Memory (RAM)
What is memory management?
The process of organising the flexible use of the computer’s main memory (RAM).
What is a utility?
A systems program that performs some specific task in the operation of the computer, for example file backup, virus checking or a compression program.
What is the purpose of systems software?
To provide a platform on which users can run programs to accomplish tasks, and maintain the computer system.
What are the two types of systems software?
The operating system and utility software
What is a user interface?
A user interface is the means by which the user and a computer system interact, in particular the use of input devices and software.
What does GUI stand for?
Graphical User Interface
What are the features of a Graphical User Interface?
Windows Icons Menus Pointers Easy to use Visual Intuitive Optimised for mouse or touch gesture input
What is a natural language interface?
A spoke user interface such as those provided by Siri, Cortona, Alexa etc.
What are the features of a natural language interface?
Answer questions spoken in natural language.
Becoming (but not always) reliable.
What does CLI stand for?
Command Line Interface
What are the features of a Command Line Interface?
Text based Less resource heavy than a GUI For advanced users Efficient More commands than a GUI Automate processes using scripts
What are the features of a menu interface?
Successive menus presented to the user
Single option chosen at each stage
What is multitasking?
multitasking is running multiple applications at the same time by giving each a small time-slice of processor time.
- Programs are loaded from secondary storage, usually a hard disk, into Random Access Memory.
- Programs are held by the Operating System in a queue.
- The program at the front of the queue runs its code on the processor.
- After a small amount of time, the program stops running and is moved to the back of the queue.
- The next program at the front of the queue then starts running.
- The cycle continues with newly loaded programs joining the queue, and programs that are closed leaving the queue.
What is fragmentation?
When programs are loaded into RAM and closed over time the memory become fragmented which means the sections of memory that programs are loaded into are split up into small sections.
What is virtual memory?
When the main memory (RAM) becomes full programs which are loaded but not currently running are moved out into secondary storage (often the Hard Disk Drive) so that other programs can be loaded into RAM to run. This moving around of programs is slow.
What are pages?
Memory that is used for programs is split into equal sized chunks called pages. This makes it easier to move the information between RAM and virtual memory.
What are peripherals?
Devices such as printers that connect to the computer
