1. PCMCIA stands for a) People Can’t Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms. ( ) b) Personal Computer Memory Card Insertion Adaptor ( ) c) Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (*) d) Personal Computer Multifunction Card Interface Adaptor ( ) (d is better but there you are).

2. The official name of the company formerly called American Telephone & Telegraph Co Inc is a) AT&T Corp (*) b) AT&T Global InformationSolutions ( ) c) AT&T Geographic InformationSystems ( ) d) AT&T Co ( )

3. Between charges, the battery in IBM’s RS/6000 40N laptop built by Tadpole Technology runs for a) 10 hours ( ) b) 24 days ( ) c) 40 minutes (*) d) 27,000 years ( )

4. Which two companies merged to form Bay Networks Inc? Was it a) Synoptics and Wellfleet (*) b) Cabletron and Wellfleet ( ) c) Cabletron and Baywatch ( ) d) Banyan and Artisoft ( )

5. The correct spelling of the authentication product is a) Kerebos ( ) b) Cerberus ( ) c) Kerberos (*) d) Cerebos ( )

6. The correct answer to No 5 is a) The multi-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades (*) b) A brand of salt ( ) c) An extinct ancestor of the rhinoceros ( ) d) The head of an Irish clan that hails from Kerry ( )

7. AT&T Global’s transaction processing monitor is called a) Top One ( ) b) Top Hole ( ) c) Top Brass ( ) d) Top End (*) (Top One was Telecomputing).

8. It was a Russian company that developed a) The punch card machine ( ) b) The technology behind the Strategic Defense Initiative ( ) c) The handwriting recognitionalgorithms in Newton (*) d) The Winchester disk ( )

9. Apple’s first signed Mac OS licensee is called a) Banzai ( ) b) Bandaid ( ) c) Bandai (*) d) Kamikazi ( )

10. Whoever it is that has licensed Mac OS is also responsible for (guilty of perpetrating) a) The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (*) b) Doom ( ) c) Beavis and Butthead ( ) d) Forrest Gump ( )

11. Most of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were created on a computer from a) Cray Research ( ) b) Silicon Graphics (*) c) Commodore ( ) d) Sun Microsystems ( )

12. The Internet evolved out of a) COST 11 ( ) b) Asynchronous Transfer Mode ( ) c) Super-Janet ( ) d) Arpanet (*)

13. SSA stands for a) Serial Storage Architecture (*) b) Software Systems Associates ( ) c) System Storage Architecture ( ) d) Simple Storage Addressing ( )

14. Control Data Corp is now a) Circadian Corp ( ) b) Ceridian Corp (*) c) Control Data Systems ( ) d) Norris Industries Inc ( ) (Control Data Systems was spun out from Control Data Corp, which changed its name to Ceridian).

15. DEC founder Ken Olsen described Unix as a) Snake oil and Russian trucks (*) b) Better than Windows NT ( ) c) Better than OpenVMS ( ) d) An IBM scam ( )

16. MS-DOS was orginally called a) CP/M ( ) b) QDOS (*) c) Basic/OS ( ) d) CP-80 ( ) (appropriately stood for Quick and Dirty Operating System).

17. The first windowing overlay for MS-DOS was called a) Windows ( ) b) TopView (*) c) BottomsUp ( ) d) Jazz ( )

18. The original IBM Series/1 minicomputer was built of bit-slice microprocessors – how many bits were there in IBM’s slice? a) One (*) b) Four ( ) c) 16 ( ) d) Eight ( ) (Very odd, but there you are)

19. Philippe Kahn named Borland after a) The agency for nannies ( ) b) Astronaut Frank Bormann but he got the name wrong (*) c) His mother ( ) d) Disneyland ( ) (That’s the story – he wanted a name sounding truly American!)

20. Compagnie des Machines Bull SA is named after a) The popular French bowling game, anglicised for the international market ( ) b) A vulgar rendition of the saying Garbage In Garbage Out ( ) c) A Norwegian computer pioneer (*) d) Magnetic memory cores which the French called bulls ( ) (He was called Fredrik Rosing Bull and designed a tabulator).

21. In its heyday, Z80 originator Zilog was owned by a) Opec ( ) b) Arthur Guinness & Co ( ) c) Exxon (*) d) Yves St Laurent ( )

22. Informix was orginally called a) Relational Technology ( )

b) Relational Database Systems (*) c) Unify ( ) d) Ashton-Tate ( ) (Ingres was Relational Technology).

23. Before he joined Apple, John Sculley a) Wrote commercials for the Coca Cola Co ( ) b) Invented the talking calculator ( ) c) Worked in a circus ( ) d) Was a Pepsi sales chief (*)

24. Which home computer did not use the 6502 microprocessor a) The Commodore Pet ( ) b) The original Sinclair (*) c) The Apple II ( ) d) The BBC Micro ( ) (It used the Z80)

25. The name of the Ada language comes from a) Ada Lady Lovelace (*) b) Advanced Defence Algol ( ) c) APL-Derived Algorithm ( ) d) The originator’s daughter ( )

26. The base model of the original IBM Personal Computer had how much main memory and disk? a) 512Kb and 10Mb ( ) b) 16Kb and 160Kb (*) c) 64Kb and 1Mb ( ) d) 64Kb and 320Kb ( ) (We had to look up the floppy size!)

27. Basic was developed by Kemeny and Kurtz at a) Bournemouth ( ) b) Portsmouth ( ) c) Dartmouth (*) d) Eastbourne ( )

28. Intel says the P6 or Sextium will have how many transistors a) Six million (*) b) Nine million ( ) c) One million ( ) d) Fifty million ( )

29. The founders of Sequent Computer Systems Corp were a team of 16 people – plus the secretary – who resigned en masse from a) Fairchild Camera & Instrument ( ) b) Tandem Computers ( ) c) Intel (*) d) Pepsico ( )

30. Multiple choice questions are popular these days because a) With luck, even ignorami should get one in four right ( ) b) It’s much easier to pick the right answer when it’s in front of you than to think it up, so teaching failures can be masked ( ) c) They can be marked by optical mark recognition on a computer ( ) d) Teachers today find reading and marking individual answers much too much like work (*) (Competition rules apply here!)

It’s reassuring that the winner, with 26 points, is Jack Schofield, computer columnist for the Guardian – you can trust what he writes; he would have got 27 but a Guardian writer couldn’t be seen endorsing politically incorrect slights on teachers. Congratulations and a รบ50 record token to him, desk diaries to those with 16 points and up.