Just Sharing This 8 bits in a byte??

2cvbloke

Regular Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2006
Messages
9,768
Reaction score
1,808
Points
113
Age
38
My Satellite Setup
No satellite stuff for the moment (aside from a 43cm minidish that was on the house already), Samsung SyncMaster T27B550 Smart TV & Monitor, and a few computers...
My Location
Near Pontop Pike, Co. Durham
That first picture on the article looks like a uniselector from a mechanical telephone exchange, if that was used in a computer, blimey... o_O
 

Analoguesat

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Messages
50,739
Reaction score
11,221
Points
113
Location
Scottish Borders
My Satellite Setup
TM 5402HD
Sky+ UK.
My Location
Scottish Borders
That first picture on the article looks like a uniselector from a mechanical telephone exchange, if that was used in a computer, blimey... o_O


So it can do a complex calculation and connect your phone call at the same time :D
 

PaulR

Dazed and Confused Admin
Staff member
Joined
Jun 28, 2003
Messages
18,023
Reaction score
4,046
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
-----------See sig-----------
My Location
Wirral, NW UK and Vaucluse, France.
By 1971/2 when I did a Computing for Scientists course it was 8 bits to a byte for sure.

And anyway, aren't 4 bits a nibble?
 

Terryl

Specialist Contributor
Joined
Apr 14, 2011
Messages
3,246
Reaction score
1,932
Points
113
Age
82
My Satellite Setup
OpenBox X5 on a 1 meter motorized dish.
And now a 10 foot "C" band dish.

Custom built PC
My Location
Deep in the Boonies in the central Sierra Nevada mountains of California.
You are correct, 4 bits = a nibble, the old way was 4 switches, 4 neon glow tube indicator bulbs and a push button, you set your switches to the first nibble (glow light off equals a logic zero, glow light on=a logic 1) hit the push button and the relays trigger the paper punches to poke out the holes in the paper tape, you reset your switches to the next code a hit the switch, once done you re-wind the paper tape and feed it into the machine, a light on one side of the tape and 4 photo detectors on the other side followed the instructions, (move tool head right, left, up, down, ect) thus the machine using it did what it was told,. (birth of machine code)

When the photo detectors became smaller the code could become 8 bits per line, the machine involved could do more, this also developed into ASCII code, you could do one master tape with several dozen TTY's following it and sending messages to multiple TTY's at multiple locations at one time.

Thus data storage was developed, the reels of paper tape later became punch cards, punch card gave way to magnetic tape, magnetic tape gave way to washing machine sized platter disks, then 8" floppy's, then 5", then 3.5" and so on.

Now a football field full of punch cards filled with data can be held in one 2 GB USB key drive.

And it was "Bit's, Nibbles and Bytes" the breakfast food of Geeks.....
 
Top