Coursework.Info - Inspiration in an Instant

On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:

Bruce Sloan 9684555 BTEC National Certificate for ICT Practitioners Computer Systems Assignment 1 - Internal Operations 1) Explain why ASCII codes are either 7-bit or 8-bit but are always stored as single byte lengths. Give six examples of ASCII codes, covering alphabetic, numeric, punctuation and control characters. Show their binary and hexadecimal values. ASCII is, strictly, a seven-bit code, meaning it uses the bit patterns representable with seven binary digits (a range of 0 to 127 decimal) to represent character information. At the time ASCII was introduced, many computers dealt with eight-bit groups (bytes or, more specifically, octets) as the smallest unit of information; the eighth bit was commonly used as a parity bit for error checking on communication lines or other device-specific functions. Machines which did not use parity typically set the eighth bit to zero, though some systems such as Prime machines running PRIMOS set the eighth bit of ASCII characters to one....

Get instant access

• Instant, unlimited access to our documents in full
• Swap your work for free access, or pay £4.99
• To see the full version of this document and 147,187 others

OR

Receive email updates for this category

• Simply tell us your email address and receive a weekly Study Help Email for FREE
• Receive 3 FREE essay views with each email
• Get all the latest essays from Coursework.Info & discussion from TheStudentRoom.co.uk