📝 Block and character devices

📖 From Operating System • 13. I/O Systems • 11 questions available

Practice MCQs for Block and character devices. Test your knowledge with carefully crafted questions across easy, medium, and hard difficulty levels.

🔄 Last updated: 2026-07-27

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📝 Sample Questions

Q1. Which of the following best defines a character device in an operating system?

🔹 A. Provides buffered I/O with fixed‑size blocks

🔹 B. Allows unbuffered, byte‑oriented access to hardware

🔹 C. Represents a network socket only

🔹 D. Handles file system metadata

💡 Difficulty: easy | ✅ Correct: B

Q2. A program reads keyboard input via a character‑device driver that uses interrupt‑driven I/O. Which sequence correctly describes what happens after the user presses a key?

🔹 A. The CPU polls the keyboard repeatedly until the key code appears

🔹 B. The keyboard controller asserts the interrupt line, the CPU saves state, runs the handler, stores the byte, then returns

🔹 C. The driver writes the key code directly to a memory‑mapped register without an interrupt

🔹 D. The OS ignores the interrupt and the program must retry later

💡 Difficulty: medium | ✅ Correct: B

Q3. A system receives both a high‑priority timer interrupt and a low‑priority disk‑completion interrupt simultaneously. Which outcome best reflects proper multilevel interrupt handling?

🔹 A. The CPU services the disk interrupt first, then the timer interrupt

🔹 B. The CPU services the timer interrupt first, then the disk interrupt

🔹 C. Both interrupts are ignored until the current process finishes its time slice

🔹 D. The system merges both interrupts into a single handler call

💡 Difficulty: hard | ✅ Correct: B

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🔗 Related Topics

📝 Overview of I/O Systems 📝 I/O Hardware in I/O Systems 📝 Polling in I/O Hardware 📝 Interrupts in I/O Hardware 📝 Direct memory access in I/O Hardware

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