Quiz# 1:

Questions to be answered.

1. What is the reason for technitians to wear special wrist grounding straps?

An antistatic wrist strap, ESD wrist strap, or ground bracelet is an antistatic device used to prevent electrostatic discharge (ESD) by safely grounding a person working on electronic equipment. It consists of a stretchy band of fabric with fine conductive fibers woven into it. The fibers are usually made of carbon or carbon-filled rubber, and the strap is bound with a stainless steel clasp or plate. They are usually used in conjunction with an anti-static mat on the workbench, or a special static-dissipating plastic laminate on the workbench surface.

The wrist strap is connected to ground through a coiled retractable cable and 1 megaohm resistor, which allows high-voltage charges to leak through but prevents a shock hazard when working with low-voltage parts. Where higher voltages are present, extra resistance (0.75 megaohm per 250V) is added in the path to ground to protect the wearer from excessive currents; this typically takes the form of a 4 megohm resistor in the coiled cable (or, more usually, a 2 megohm resistor at each end). Very cheap wrist straps do not have conductive fabric and instead use the fabric to hold the metal plate against the skin, which can result in reduced ESD protection over time as the metal corrodes.
Wrist straps in industry usually connect to Earth Bonding Points (part of the grounding system) via either a 4 mm plug or 10 mm press stud, whereas personally owned straps are likely to be connected to ground via a crocodile clip.
In addition to wrist straps, ankle and heel straps are used in industry to bleed away accumulated charge from a body. These devices are usually not tethered to earth ground, but instead incorporate high resistance in their construction, and work by dissipating electrical charge to special floor tiles. Such straps are used when workers need to be mobile in a work area and a grounding cable would get in the way, such as in an operating theatre.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antistatic_wrist_strap


2.) After installing a new computer component why is it important to obtain the most current driver for it?

It is required that we install the proper drivers for a certain OS and the hardware used by our computer. Because it may not funtion properly if you intalled a different driver or sofware for a certain driver or the softare is not updated properly. It is important to obtain the most compatible driver or softwares for your computer for it to function properly and no errors may occur.

Source: none.

3.) What are the steps required to install a peripheral device?

A peripheral is a device attached to a host computer behind the chipset whose primary functionality is dependent upon the host, and can therefore be considered as expanding the hosts capabilities, while not forming part of the system's core architecture.

Some of the more common peripheral devices are printers, scanners, disk drives, tape drives, microphones, speakers, and cameras. Peripheral devices can also include other computers on a network system. A device can also refer to a non-physical item, such as a pseudo terminal, a RAM drive, or a virtual network adapter.


Steps:
1.) Install or connect the device to your computer.
2.) Install the proper software for the certain device.
3.) Configurate the software using its SETUP options.
4.) Use the device thoughrouly.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_device

4.) If a newly installed peripheral device does not function properly what steps can be taken to correct the problem?

First you must check if the compabability of a certain device you installed was compatible for your computer. Then check the handware and software you installed as well. Then you may re-install the software for your device so that you can fix the errors you may encounter. Check also the configurations of your device so that you can determine that the divice is already ready to use and it is functional.

Source: none.

5.) Explain the technique used t0 help protect data on a hard drive when doing a clean install?

In information technology, backup refers to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. These additional copies are typically called "backups." Backups are useful primarily for two purposes. The first is to restore a state following a disaster (called disaster recovery). The second is to restore small numbers of files after they have been accidentally deleted or corrupted. Data loss is also very common.

Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all data worth saving, the data storage requirements are considerable. Organizing this storage space and managing the backup process is a complicated undertaking. A data repository model can be used to provide structure to the storage. In the modern era of computing there are many different types of data storage devices that are useful for making backups. There are also many different ways in which these devices can be arranged to provide geographic redundancy, data security, and portability.
Before data is sent to its storage location, it is selected, extracted, and manipulated. Many different techniques have been developed to optimize the backup procedure. These include optimizations for dealing with open files and live data sources as well as compression, encryption, and de-duplication, among others. Many organizations and individuals try to have confidence that the process is working as expected and work to define measurements and validation techniques. It is also important to recognize the limitations and human factors involved in any backup scheme.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup

6.) Explain what a software patch is:

A patch, or diff, is a record of changes made to a resource. Typically a patch will add a new feature, fix a bug, or add documentation to the project.

Patches are the preferred way to submit contributions to open development projects such as open source software. Various tools are available to help with patches. These tools make it very easy to create and manage patches for project outputs such as source code and documentation.

Some people wonder why they should put the effort into providing a patch. They may consider it additional work over and above the development effort of making the modifications in the first place. If everyone thought like that there would be no community and therefore no open development, so clearly it is in everyone's interest to provide patches. However, there is a second, much more selfish reason for creating and submitting a quality patch: it makes it easier to maintain your use of the project outputs.

At some point in the future an organisation is likely to want to utilise the latest and greatest release of the project outputs. If that organisation's staff has failed to work with the community in order to have their local modifications accepted they will need to reapply all changes, or lose them. That is, the organisation will be paying its staff to make each change twice.
It is easy to ignore this fact. After all, each change seems insignificant and easy to reapply. However, each change is cumulative, and since the project has been progressing independently of your changes it is quite possible that the application of your modifications will no longer be a simple activity.

Source: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/softwarepatch.xml