CompTIA A+ 1001 practice questions need explaining

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Hi,
I am preparing for CompTIA A+ 1001 & 1002 exam, and I have a lot of questions, as the answers from kaplanlearn platform that ITProTV recommends aren't entirely clear to me.

Could someone from ITProTV answer those questions for me comprehensively, please? I think these answers will help many students, not just me.

1. Q: Which two wires form an AT power supply should be adjacent to each other on a motherboard, A: black wires
   Why two black wires should be adjacent?

2. Which feature optimizes network traffic on the network connection page? A: QoS Packet Scheduler
   Why on the network connection page and how QoS Packet Scheduler works?

3. Q: How does a lower clock speed on a portable computer, as compared to a desktop, affect the front-side bus? A: The lower clock speeds in a portable computer mean that there is a lower multiplier. This enables the front-side bus to be increased to a higher level before the overclocker runs into a clock-speed barrier
   Why would you apply a lower clock speed on a portable computer? Is overclocking popular in portable computers? I think this should question should refer to a PC.

4. What is the transmission distance supported by multi-mode fibre optic cable, A: 3000 feet (914 m)
   Well, it really depends on what gbit/s we want to achieve. If we want to transfer at 10 Gbit/s, then the distance is 550m. The distance decreases the overall speed of MMF, but it isn’t limited to 3000 feet. Why the answer is 3000 feet? It is probably for 1 Gbits/s, but it isn’t stated in the question.

5. Q: What should you do FIRST when upgrading a motherboard of a computer? A: Confirm the CMOS settings
   This one is quite confusing. I googled upgrading a motherboard and each website refers to changing the motherboard to a better one. Does this question mean upgrading the BIOS of the motherboard? If so, the FIRST step should be PERFORM BACKUP. Why confirm the CMOS settings?

6. Q: What are the three basic requirements to use a USB keyboard with a computer? A: The USB port, USB keyboard driver and BIOS should also feature USB legacy support.
   Why BIOS should also feature USB legacy support? As I am aware, USB is a standard and all keyboards are connected via USB nowadays. Why would you need USB legacy support?

7. In iPhones, from which sources do the GPS obtains its information? A: Satellites, cell towers and WiFi
   I had very similar. It asked about “mobile devices” and the answer was satellites, excluding cell towers and WiFi. Are cell towers and WiFi sources utilised by iPhone GPS only?

Hey @Maciej-Staniec

Great questions, let’s me see if we can clear up some of this answers for your

• 1st- the AT power supply connectors could potentially be reversed so the way to remember how to arrange them is "black-on-black” see below:

• 2nd – The QoS Packet Scheduler is a “traffic control” module that regulates data flow or how much data an application is allowed to send. As to the Network Connections portion of the question, this is a “protocol binding” that is used by a network adapter in Windows and can be seen below:

More information can be located here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/desktop/qos/packet-scheduler

• 3rd – Lower clock speeds are set on portable devices to reduce power consumption and reduce heat. These are two big factors in portable devices.

• 4th - As you have rightfully pointed out 10 Gbps implementations reduce the transmission distance of MMF to 550 meters, however it does support longer transmission distances and slower speeds, but this is more of a legacy implementations such as 1 Gbps, 100 Mbps and 10 Mbps.

• 5th – The thought process behind checking CMOS settings is the fact that these are the customizations of the BIOS configuration (SATA ports, security settings, AHCI vs. IDE vs. RAID and most importantly the real-time system clock). When a motherboard is replaced, the technician will have to reconfigure the customized BIOS settings, if these settings have been confirmed ahead of time then the system can easily be reconfigured after installment, to the prior settings.

• 6th – This is something I ran into quite a few years ago and has largely been overcome by more modern BIOSs and certainly in UEFI-based systems. Today we have something called USB emulation that is built into the modern systems that allow the USB mice and keyboard to be initialized at start (and USB boot devices). One important thing to remember is that BIOS does not give instruction to these input devices, the OS does through drivers. Older BIOSs would be expecting PS/2 connections and if these were not found the boot process would fail. Today this is not a problem. You can power your system and the BIOS will not halt the boot process if there is no keyboard attached to the system, which is why this question can seem “strange”.

• 7th - The Global Positioning System here in the states is comprised of 27 satellites (24 active, 3 standby) arranged in a constellation to triangulate a device's position. This does not use cellular or WiFi communications. See below for more information:
  https://www.gps.gov/

@wes-bryan Hi pal, you alright? Thanks for the great answers!
I need another 2 answers for 2 of them:

1. What connector is shown in the picture? It’s definitely not P1. Is there a chance it may come up on the exam?
2. Does it mean that legacy operating system like MS-DOS requires USB legacy support, so it detects USB keyboard/mouse as PS/2 peripherals? Did I get that right?

as of question 2 - I had no idea that the question was about the “Network Connection” page in the Control Panel applet

I've got another great question for you - does Hadware Assisted Virtualization technology (like VT-x or AMD-V) allow to run Type 1 hypervisors? Can we run type 1 hypervisors without HAV? Does HAV benefit type 2 hypervisors?

@Maciej-Staniec love these questions, keep them coming. Let's see if we can help with this next set.
1st – Here is a rundown of a few more connectors
AT PSU Connectors:

• P8, P9 main PSU connector

ATX PSU & CPU Connectors:

• 20, 20+4, 24 pin ATX PSU main connector
• P4 = originally for the Pentium 4 processor
• EPS/ATX = 8 pin CPU connector

2nd - Yes when it comes to the USB input devices.

3rd - The Hardware Assisted Virtualization or Intel VT-x and AMD-v allow us to do virtualization (Type 1 and Type 2), this is the CPU support for virtualization, without it we cannot use virtualization.

The difference between the Type 1 and Type 2 is how the hypervisor is positioned in the computing stack. Type 1 hypervisors run underneath an operating system and allow for better performance (simplified), Type 2 hypervisors position the hypervisor inside an operating system and run just like any other application running within the OS as well. Type 2 hypervisors are very useful for testing, however due to the overhead of running inside the host operating system, to not performance as well as Type 1 hypervisors.

@wes-bryan Thanks for your answers!

I've just googled P1 and P2 connectors and so far I couldn't find anything similar to those shown in your previous post. I found P8 and P9 connectors, these look to me to be AT connectors.

Source: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/p8.htm

It looks like P1 has to be 20 (ATX12), 20+4(ATX12 v1.Xx or 24 (ATX12 v.2x).

Could you clarify this?

You are most definitely correct, that was a typo on my part

P8, P9 are AT

P1 is the ATX connector

and what I called the P8 was suppose to say

ATX/EPS 12V 8-pin CPU connector

my apologies