Review Questions for Chapter 3

3.1 What kinds of limited functions did early PC monitor programs provide?
a. Very basic I!" #ead a key from the keyboard$ %rite a character to the C#&$ dump
memory to a cassette$ load memory from a cassette$ print a character.
3.' What kind of error checking %as done on the arguments to the calls to the monitor program?
What %as the likely result?
a. (ittle or no error checking %as done and the result %as that applications tended to
crash the entire system because of errors in these arguments.
3.3 )arly on in the PC era there %ere a multitude of small startup hard%are vendors and all of
their users %ere clamoring for soft%are. What %as the characteristic of early monitors in this
environment that led to the development of a real !*?
a. &he main problem %as a lack of standardi+ation among the many different
microprocessor systems on the marketplace. *oft%are vendors didn,t %ant to guess
%hich hard%are platform might be successful and %hich %ould be disasters. &hey
%anted to develop applications that %ould run on any system built %ith a given
microprocessor.
3.- What %as the overriding characteristic of the hard%are systems that CP. and .*/0!*
%ere designed to run on and %hat %ere some of the design decisions that %ere made as a
result?
a. &hey had a very small main memory.
b. &he !* had to all fit in memory. !nly one process at a time could be run. )rror
checking of parameters to !* calls %as minimal and error messages %ere limited
and cryptic.
3.1 &he basic I! needs of early programs %ere fairly modest. *ome applications$ ho%ever$ had
some%hat more comple2 needs. In many cases the functions provided by the monitor %ere
much slo%er than e3uivalent functions that %ere in the 4I!* code. What did the application
programmers do %hen the functions the !* provided hid the functions that the application
needed or %ere so slo% that the performance of the application %as unacceptable? What
problems did that cause?
a. &hey resorted to directly accessing the 4I!* routines$ or even %orse$ directly
accessing the hard%are$ bypassing the 4I!* and the 40!*. &his led to programs
that %ere tied to specific hard%are implementations.
3.5 4esides the keyboard and video$ %hat %as the other ma6or I! system that %as very
important in the early !*s?
a. 0isk I! and file systems. &here %ere many different disk drives and standards
evolved 3uickly. !n the other hand$ the programs mostly 6ust needed a place to be
stored and to save data that the user created. &he characteristics of the disk
hard%are %ere a very good e2ample of the kind of detail th
b. at an application programmer doesn,t %ant to kno% about.
3.7 &o the command interpreter$ most of the commands that a user types are e2ecuted by finding
a program on the disk %ith that name and running it. 8 fe% commands are not mapped to
programs on the disk. Where do they reside?
a. In the command interpreter itself. &hey are generally commands that happen to
closely match %ith some !* system call$ so the command interpreter 6ust parses the
arguments and calls the !* routine via a trap instruction. It then displays the
ans%ers. &his is much faster than calling in an e2ternal utility program from the disk.
3.9 !n a floppy disk :or a hard disk; the heads on all the surfaces %ill be in the same relative
position over the surfaces measured in from the outside of the disk. 8s the disk rotates$ a
certain portion of a surface %ill pass under each head. What is that portion of the surface
called? &hat portion is divided up into smaller pieces. &hose pieces are the smallest
addressable portion of the disk. What are these pieces called?
a. 8 track
b. 8 sector
3.< CP. divided the contents of a floppy disk into three parts. What %ere these three parts?
a. &he disk boot area or !* image area
b. &he file directory area
c. &he data storage area
3.1= Why does the CP. !* reside in high memory instead of lo% memory?
a. It allo%ed all user programs to be created so that they al%ays started at the same
address. !ther%ise$ every time the !* si+e changed the user programs %ould have
to be reloaded. :&his %as the situation %ith .*/0!*$ for e2ample.;
3.11 &rue or false" !verlays are an obsolete techni3ue used %hen system memories %ere
very small and are no longer used in modern systems.
a. >alse. )mbedded systems often have small memories and overlays are conveniently
used. In addition$ as %e %ill see in Chapter 1$ they are often used in applications for
handheld systems. &hey are used there to implement ?internationali+ation$@ or
configuring systems for different user interface languages. &he te2t strings
representing the user messages %ill be generated in different overlays for different
languages$ but the string for a given message %ill be located at the same address for
each language. When a language is selected by the user the appropriate language
overlay is loaded and the program %ill get the right string %hen it addresses a
message.
3.1' While CP. did not allo% true application multiprocessing$ it did allo% one sort of
background processing. What %as that?
a. Printing of files