That's exactly the kind of crap I hate about those exams.

All of those details are things that I can look up or find out in seconds whenever I need them in the real world. Memorizing them is useless to me in day to day business. If there's a conflict on an IRQ, the important thing is knowing how to recognize it when it happens, how to narrow it down, and how to solve it. Not whether or not you've memorized the exact IRQ number for the Com2 port.

And memorizing resistor bands? Aw hell, I've never even bothered to try, it's printed on every package of resistors I've ever bought from Radio Shack. I just make sure not to throw the last package away.

Which wires in the USB cable carry the data? Who cares? Look up the pinouts online somewhere, or keep a printed pinout reference. Jeez. Or better yet, JUST BUY A NEW FUCKING CABLE IF IT'S GIVING YOU TROUBLE.

God, I hate these kinds of exams. So pointless.

If they want to separate the men from the boys, give them a PC that won't boot because of some bullshit with a new Microsoft service pack being incompatible with an installed device driver. See if they can get it up and running . Memorizing cable pinouts isn't gonna help in the real world. Argh.

Anyway, that's why I concentrated on the exams instead of the material, because that way I could find out what bullshit minutiae they were going to test me on, and I could concentrate on memorizing just that insted of every single possible data point in the course materials.