Conventional fire alarms have a drawback where:

• A. The activated device cannot be detected; only the zone can be identified.
• B. The activated device can be detected immediately.
• C. The system cannot identify any zone.
• D. The FACP receives no information from devices.

Answer: (A)

Conventional fire alarm setups group detectors into zones on shared initiating circuits. When any device in a zone triggers, the control panel flags an alarm for that entire zone, but it doesn’t identify which exact device within that zone caused it. That means you know where the alarm happened geographically (the zone), but not the specific device. This is the key drawback of conventional systems. In contrast, addressable systems assign each device its own address, allowing the panel to pinpoint the exact activated device. The other statements don’t fit because the panel does receive information, just not device-level detail, and the alarm isn’t identified as immediate device-level activation in conventional setups.