Bits and Bytes
- How 1's and 0's create numbers:
0 --> 0
1 --> 1
10 --> 2
11 --> 3
100 --> 4
101 --> 5
. . . . . .
101111001000 --> 3016
- Text (characters): these are stored as 8-bit "bytes".
About half of
the characters are actual printing characters, but many are
non-printing, such as the "bell", "carriage return", "line-feed",
"ack", "nak", and others. Typical byte patterns include:
00100000 --> blank space
00100001 --> !
01000001 --> A
01100001 --> a
and so on
Thus any written text (e.g., Shakesphere or any dictionary) can
be fully represented with strings of 1's and 0's.
The last 7 bits of this 8-bit code stand for the 128 characters
that make up the ASCII code (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange), so when the 8-bit code starts with
a '0' the characters are ASCII. Most of these characters are
printable ones.
- Pictures: consider the following two diagrams:
Picture 1's and 0,s
........X........ 00000000100000000
...... X.X....... 00000001010000000
......X...X...... 00000010001000000
.....X.....X..... 00000100000100000
....X.......X.... 00001000000010000
...X.........X... 00010000000001000
..X...........X.. 00100000000000100
.X.............X. 01000000000000010
X...............X 10000000000000001
For black and white, we represent each pixel (picture element)
with a 1 or 0; for color we represent each pixel with either
a string og 8 bits (256 colors), 16 bit (65000 colors), or
24 bits ( 8 bits Red, 8 bits Green, 8 bits Blue for 16.7 million
colors).
- Sounds: we can represent each pitch
at any given instant as a
binary number (harmonics are represented as a set of binary
numbers) and so all sounds can be represented by strings of
1's and 0's
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Class Topics
Bits and Bytes
PC Hardware
Using Help
Files, Folders, and Directories
Windows
File Manipulation
Customizing Your PC
Handling Errors and Aborts
Specific Applications: NotePad and WORD
Finding Information About Your PC
Connection to the Internet
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