Which type of read-only memory can have its contents erased by exposure to ultraviolet light?
- A.PROM
- B.EPROM
- C.EEPROM
- D.DRAM
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, EPROM, erasable programmable read-only memory. A chip of this kind has a small quartz window, and shining ultraviolet light through it clears the stored contents so the chip can be programmed again. Until it is erased, it behaves like ordinary read-only memory and keeps its contents without power.
Option A, PROM, is programmable read-only memory, which is blank when made and can be written by the user exactly once; after that it cannot be changed at all. Option C, EEPROM, is electrically erasable programmable read-only memory, where the contents are wiped by an electrical signal rather than by light, which is why it can be updated while still inside the machine. Option D, DRAM, is dynamic random access memory, a volatile read-write memory that must be refreshed continually, so it is not a read-only memory at all. The key words are once, ultraviolet and electrically.
Read the full article: Basics of Computers and Generations: Parts, Memory and MCQs
Practice Questions
View allWho is known as the Father of the Computer?
- A.Blaise Pascal
- B.Charles Babbage
- C.Alan Turing
- D.Herman Hollerith
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He designed the Difference Engine and then the Analytical Engine, and the Analytical Engine contained the logical parts of a modern computer: a store for holding numbers, a mill for calculating, punched-card input and a printed output.
Read the full explanation →Vacuum tubes were used as the main electronic component in which generation of computers?
- A.First generation
- B.Second generation
- C.Third generation
- D.Fourth generation
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Machines such as ENIAC, EDVAC and UNIVAC-I ran on thousands of vacuum tubes, which made them enormous, power-hungry and dependent on constant cooling.
Read the full explanation →The transistor, which defined second-generation computers, was invented at which laboratory?
- A.Texas Instruments
- B.Intel Corporation
- C.Bell Laboratories
- D.IBM Research
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John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley demonstrated the transistor there in 1947, and the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for it.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is regarded as the first commercially available electronic computer?
- A.ENIAC
- B.EDVAC
- C.Harvard Mark I
- D.UNIVAC-I
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It was the first electronic computer built to be sold to customers rather than used only in a laboratory, and it was famously put to work on census and business data processing.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the Intel 4004, the first commercial microprocessor, introduced?
- A.1964
- B.1971
- C.1975
- D.1981
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The Intel 4004 placed an entire processing unit on a single chip for the first time in a commercial product, and that step marks the beginning of the fourth generation of computers, built on very large scale integration.
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