LPI (Linux Professional Institute) certification WTFs



  •  I'm about to take the LPI (Linux Professional Institute) Certification exam, and while taking a dummy (dumb) test, I come up across this question:

     LPI WTF



  • Security notice:

    When you see any of those connectors (especially B and D), do not try to forcefully insert them into the alledgedly corresponding input jacks.



  • Spot the WTFs. I have... 4 now.



  •  

    None of these look like C, and besides, C has only 25 pins!

    D is NOT VGA because  VGA has three rows of pins. And B has 15 pins, not 25! They probably aren't using the decimal system :-)



  •  This 1st WTF is the question structure:

    LPI WTF v2



  • You don't see it much, but there was a SCSI interface that used a 25 pin connector, physically the same as a parallel connector. It was used mostly for zip drives and scanners.

     See last page here: http://www.goesp.com/Downloads/Documents/scsi-cheat-sheet.pdf



  • @jjeff1 said:

    You don't see it much, but there was a SCSI interface that used a 25 pin connector, physically the same as a parallel connector. It was used mostly for zip drives and scanners.

     

    The way I see it, it was used for everything before Fast-SCSI was invented. Anyway, it seems rather unlikely to me that todays Linux admins will have to work with SCSI1 cables. 



  •  Clearly D (and A, if you ignore the difference in size) are the gamepad connectors of the Sega Genesis.

     And why do they look so hand-painted? And yeah, D doesn't look like VGA to me.



  • The LPI website scares me. They show massive conference-center-sized rooms full of tables filled with assorted Asian people hunched over what must be the LPI exam.

    I'm sorry, but if your test is the kind that is taken by 2000 people at a time in the same place... it's not the sort of exclusive certification I'd really want.



  • @ammoQ said:

    The way I see it, it was used for everything before Fast-SCSI was invented.

     

    Not really. Classic Macs used to have them, so maybe LPI are into retro computing.  All the other ancient stuff that I recall used the big Centronics connectors but jjeff1 is probably right.




  • WTF?

    A and D are the same connector.  "VGA" is HE-15, three rows of pins.  Morons.

    B is a DA-15 "MIDI/Game Port" connector.

    E is USB A, probably Female.

    C is DB-25, used for very old SCSI external connections, like so old you need to buy a Apple Macintosh computer with a m68k or PPC processor. 



  • @Benanov said:

    WTF?

    A and D are the same connector.  "VGA" is HE-15, three rows of pins.  Morons.  Morans.

    B is a DA-15 "MIDI/Game Port" connector.

    E is USB A, probably Female.

    C is DB-25, used for very old SCSI external connections, like so old you need to buy a Apple Macintosh computer with a m68k or PPC processor. 

    Fixed that for you.

    Moran



  • A and D are the exact same connector only resized.  Were these to be actual size photos or not?  Questions like this can throw a shadow of invalidation on the whole exam.

     

    Help Desk Girl forever, she even has a tattoo! 



  •  Nah, B is clearly a DA-15 AUI connector. No, wait! Maybe it's for a Mac monitor cable

    A or D might be 9-pin MDA / CGA / EGA monitor connectors. During the transition to VGA there were some video cards (Paradise?) that had both DA9S and HD15S connectors. There were also some monitors (NEC Multisync?) that did EGA or VGA over a 9-pin connector. 

    I've got an ISA SCSI board that uses a DB25, meant for compatibility with Macs of the era, I suspect. 

     Who else remembers Macs with 17- and 19-pin D-subs?

     



  • @CRNewsom said:

    Fixed that for you.

    <snip>

    As a Reds fan, it's always nice to see Cardinals fans being idiots. 



  • @taoufix said:

     This 1st WTF is the question structure:

    LPI WTF v2

     

     

    Sorry, but that's weak.  It says, "which of the following," and then follows with 5 text based choices that refer to the above picture.  Maybe not the way you would have chosen to do it, but certainly not a WTF.



  •  @shadowman said:

    Sorry, but that's weak.  It says, "which of the following," and then follows with 5 text based choices that refer to the above picture.  Maybe not the way you would have chosen to do it, but certainly not a WTF.

    Please say you are joking...



  • @belgariontheking said:

    As a Reds fan, it's always nice to see Cardinals fans being idiots. 

     

    Elvis Knievel Agrees ...

    [url=http://moran.house.gov/]Senator Jim Moran[/url] 



  • @zlogic said:

    None of these look like C, and besides, C has only 25 pins!

    D is NOT VGA because  VGA has three rows of pins. And B has 15 pins, not 25! They probably aren't using the decimal system :-)

    Twenty years ago, the question would have made sense. "A" is indeed a 9-pin serial connector. "B" is probably a DA-15 connector -- I'm not aware of any implementation of RS-232 that uses that one, but I wouldn't be surprised. "C" is a 25-pin external SCSI connector -- popular on Macs 15-20 years ago, but nobody uses it anymore. "D" is properly a "pre-VGA connector", but these days, people use "VGA" to refer to any analog computer video.



  • I would say the real WTF is having a question about hardware on a linux certification test.  



  • @stratos said:

    I would say the real WTF is having a question about hardware on a linux certification test.  

    Or questions about XP on an A+ (Hardware) test.



  • @n3hat said:

     Who else remembers Macs with 17- and 19-pin D-subs?

     

    Hm ... oddly enough, I've not seen that. I've got a mixture of 50-pin Centronics, and 25-pin D-sub. I've also got a SCSI NIC intended for a PowerBook, with a very thick and very stiff HDI-30 cable.

    So, I had a random look -- 19-pin D-sub is the old floppy drive connector (spotted it on the back of my Classic). I have, in the cupboard, an external 5.25" Mac floppy drive, but no PSU for it. I've never bothered to track one down, and the evil damp cupboard has probably killed it by now. I was always idly curious if it would use a 5.25" disc icon or a 3.5" icon and, come to think of it, how it's been rigged to detect disc insertion ...

    I don't know of a 17-pin D-sub though. Incidentally, the Acorn Archimedes used a standard PC serial socket for the monitor connection.



  • @n3hat said:

    Nah, B is clearly a DA-15 AUI connector. No, wait! Maybe it's for a Mac monitor cable

    I have one of those monitors. It's very annoying to get a monitor for $1 and then pay $10 for an adapter.


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