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Basics of Computers - Number System

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Basics of Computers – Introduction

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Basics of Computers -
Classifications The technique to represent and work with numbers is called number system. Decimal
number system is the most common number system. Other popular number systems
Basics of Computers – S/W
Concepts include binary number system, octal number system, hexadecimal number
system, etc.
Basics
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S/W
Decimal Number System
Functions of Operating System
Decimal number system is a base 10 number system having 10 digits from 0 to 9. This
Types of Operating System means that any numerical quantity can be represented using these 10 digits. Decimal

Basics of Computers – Utility S/W number system is also a positional value system. This means that the value of digits
will depend on its position. Let us take an example to understand this.
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Say we have three numbers – 734, 971 and 207. The value of 7 in all three numbers is
Basics of Computers – Office Tools
different−
Domain Specific Tools
In 734, value of 7 is 7 hundreds or 700 or 7 × 100 or 7 × 102
Number System In 971, value of 7 is 7 tens or 70 or 7 × 10 or 7 × 101
In 207, value 0f 7 is 7 units or 7 or 7 × 1 or 7 × 100
Number System Conversion

Microprocessor Concepts The weightage of each position can be represented as follows −

Evolution of Microprocessor

Primary Memory

Secondary Memory In digital systems, instructions are given through electric signals; variation is done by

Basics of Computers – I/O Ports varying the voltage of the signal. Having 10 different voltages to implement decimal
number system in digital equipment is difficult. So, many number systems that are
Basics of Computers Resources easier to implement digitally have been developed. Let’s look at them in detail.

Basics of Computers – Quick Binary Number System

Guide
The easiest way to vary instructions through electric signals is two-state system – on
Basics of Computers – Resources and off. On is represented as 1 and off as 0, though 0 is not actually no signal but signal

Basics of Computers – Discussion at a lower voltage. The number system having just these two digits – 0 and 1 – is called
binary number system.
Selected Reading Each binary digit is also called a bit. Binary number system is also positional value
system, where each digit has a value expressed in powers of 2, as displayed here.
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Effective Resume Writing In any binary number, the rightmost digit is called least significant bit (LSB) and
leftmost digit is called most significant bit (MSB).
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And decimal equivalent of this number is sum of product of each digit with its positional
value.

110102 = 1×24 + 1×23 + 0×22 + 1×21 + 0×20

= 16 + 8 + 0 + 2 + 0

= 2610

Computer memory is measured in terms of how many bits it can store. Here is a chart
for memory capacity conversion.

1 byte (B) = 8 bits

1 Kilobytes (KB) = 1024 bytes
1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 KB
1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1024 MB
1 Terabyte (TB) = 1024 GB
1 Exabyte (EB) = 1024 PB
1 Zettabyte = 1024 EB
1 Yottabyte (YB) = 1024 ZB

Octal Number System

Octal number system has eight digits – 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Octal number system
is also a positional value system with where each digit has its value expressed in
powers of 8, as shown here −

Decimal equivalent of any octal number is sum of product of each digit with its
positional value.

7268 = 7×82 + 2×81 + 6×80

= 448 + 16 + 6

= 47010

Hexadecimal Number System

Octal number system has 16 symbols – 0 to 9 and A to F where A is equal to 10, B is
equal to 11 and so on till F. Hexadecimal number system is also a positional value
system with where each digit has its value expressed in powers of 16, as shown here −

Decimal equivalent of any hexadecimal number is sum of product of each digit with its
positional value.

27FB16 = 2×163 + 7×162 + 15×161 + 10×160

= 8192 + 1792 + 240 +10

= 1023410

Number System Relationship

The following table depicts the relationship between decimal, binary, octal and
hexadecimal number systems.

HEXADECIMAL DECIMAL OCTAL BINARY

0 0 0 0000

1 1 1 0001

2 2 2 0010

3 3 3 0011

4 4 4 0100

5 5 5 0101

6 6 6 0110

7 7 7 0111

8 8 10 1000

9 9 11 1001

A 10 12 1010

B 11 13 1011

C 12 14 1100

D 13 15 1101

E 14 16 1110

F 15 17 1111

ASCII
Besides numerical data, computer must be able to handle alphabets, punctuation
marks, mathematical operators, special symbols, etc. that form the complete character
set of English language. The complete set of characters or symbols are called
alphanumeric codes. The complete alphanumeric code typically includes −

26 upper case letters

26 lower case letters
10 digits
7 punctuation marks
20 to 40 special characters

Now a computer understands only numeric values, whatever the number system used.
So all characters must have a numeric equivalent called the alphanumeric code. The
most widely used alphanumeric code is American Standard Code for Information
Interchange (ASCII). ASCII is a 7-bit code that has 128 (27) possible codes.

ISCII
ISCII stands for Indian Script Code for Information Interchange. IISCII was
developed to support Indian languages on computer. Language supported by IISCI
include Devanagari, Tamil, Bangla, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Telugu, etc. IISCI is
mostly used by government departments and before it could catch on, a new universal
encoding standard called Unicode was introduced.

Unicode
Unicode is an international coding system designed to be used with different language
scripts. Each character or symbol is assigned a unique numeric value, largely within the
framework of ASCII. Earlier, each script had its own encoding system, which could
conflict with each other.

In contrast, this is what Unicode officially aims to do − Unicode provides a unique

number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program,
no matter what the language.

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