About 24 hours from now, I'll already be 2/3's of the way through my A+ Core exam, but I want to see if anyone can help point me in the right direction before I finally take it.
I'm a 16 year old Junior in high school, still taking the only comp maint./hardware repair class at my *somewhat budget deficient* school, which goes through Cisco, and since the end of March I have been preparing for this.
I don't consider practice exams to evaluate my final performance on the exam, unlike how most people usually do, I guess. For me, it helps me to know what I should do next right time when faced with that question. I've only failed a few of the practice tests, I admit, and they were on mcmcse... missed 60% just by a hair.
I've probably only been working with computers for two years, software and hardware.
Right now, I know my IRQ's, I/O's, I'm familiar with the most common DMA questions, serial and parallel ports and their transmissions of data, stuff from SATA to RAID and back to SCSI, printers... the basics, really.
I can't say I'm having difficulty on the following, I just need to shape up on the material in the next 10 or so hours:
1.) I've got Laser Printers completely down (thanks to one member for "California Cows Won't Do The Fandago), but I need to memorize a bit more about how to correct printer problems once identified and what is causing them (aside from obvious toner/ink/paper stuff), and also some specifics on inket and dot matrix workings... like pins.
2.) CPU's... almost got this down. I just need to remember things about the really old ones, like 486's significance and the mhz between those trick Xeon and PII-III questions... hopefully you know what I'm talking about!
3.) Networking cable lengths, Token Ring, and the attributes of Cat's 5 through 6. Oh... and modems. grr. Oh, and the NetBeui and IPX protocols are just a tad blurry for me.
4.) The multimeter's functions under certain conditions and other prev. maintenace like error codes - we just got to this module this week in my class, and it's all new to me. Easy, but lots to cover.
5.) Voltage specifics: "A typical 486 CPU runs at what voltage?"
That's really it. I've been using this site and many others, as well as a mindworks study test guide from 1999, and Mark Minasai's 12th edition (2001) =\, oh and the cisco fundamentals site... BIG help, trust me.
So if you read through all this, thank you much, if you just want the point of it, here's the kicker in the bold:
What else is there I should be doing besides the obvious? I really mean, what caught you off guard on the exam, or what do you think might catch others off guard that you have seen?
I totally understand you cannot give me any specific answers, but any examples in your own words would help. But finally, I'm totally confident I will pass this, but still being realistic; I have enough time to fix my mistakes, I hope.
