CIS3355: Business Data Structures in C/C++

Dr. Peeter Kirs

 

Bits and Bytes: Short Answer/Problem Questions

 

NOTE: Checking the answers before you have tried to answer the questions doesn’t help you at all

 

00100.   Describe three binary conditions which people experience on a daily basis.

 

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00110.  Describe three ternary conditions people experience on a daily basis.

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00112.   How do the number of digits I have influence how many different combinations of digits I can have?

 

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00120.   Remember the student evaluation schemes which the professor in the next-door office and I established? Good News. Five (5) new light switches have been added, bringing the total number of light switches to 9. How many student ratings could we now assign?

 

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00122.   What is the general formula for determining how much information I can have for a given number of digits?

 

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00124.   I am starting my own language. It will consist of only the consonants (B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z) which can only be represented in Uppercase. Additionally, I will only allow octal (8 and 9 are not allowed). To further simplify matters, I will only have 5 special characters (+ - space . ,) and 4 hidden characters (CR, LF, EOL, and ESC). I don’t care about Parity (my machines will be perfect). How many bits do I need to fully represent the entire character set?

 

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00130.  What do light switches have to do with computers?

 

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00140.   How were these light switches originally stored in computers?

 

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00150.   How was the voltage to these "light switches" controlled?

 

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00160.   How are computer switches different from "light switches"?

 

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00170.   What is a computer's clock speed?

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00172.   Original IBM PC's ran at about 4.77 MHz. What does that mean?

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00180.   I have built a new computer that operates at 32.76 MHz. Theoretically, how many times could I change the signal it contains in 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 13 seconds?

 

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00190.   Why was determining how many bits to group together an issue for early computer architects?

 

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00200. Approximately how many bits did early architects feel they needed to group together and why? 

 

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00250.  Why was parity developed?

 

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00260.  How does parity work?

 

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00270.  Which is better: Even or odd parity?

 

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00280.  Can all errors be detected? What are some examples?

 

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00290.  Is parity still used?

 

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00350.  Why was ASCII developed?

 

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00360.  Why is it important that computers use the same coding scheme?

 

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00370.  Who developed ASCII and why?

 

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00380.  How many characters are there in the ASCII character set? ?

 

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00390.  What are the ASCII codes for the following characters:

 

a.   NULL                                      g.   0 (zero)

b.   BEL                                        h.   7

c.   BackSpace                            i.    A

d.   CR                                          j.    M

e.   ESC                                       k.   a

f.    Space                                     l.    t

 

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00450.  What is an ASCII File?

 

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00460.  How are ASCII Files read? ?

 

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00468.  If we saw that the sequence of bits 010101110110100001101111 stored in an ASCII file, what message is being sent?

 

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00470.  If we saw that the sequence of bits: 00110110101011100110000111011010, which is stored in a non-ASCII file, and tried to read it as if it were an ASCII file, what would we find?

 

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00480.   What is a binary file?

 

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00500. What is EBCDIC and why was it developed?

 

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00510. How is EBCDIC different than ASCII?

 

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00550. What is Unicode?

 

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00560. What additional characters are included in Unicode?

 

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2.b.  How do the number of digits I have influence how many different combinations of digits I can have?

 

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3.   I am starting my own language. It will consist of only the consonants (B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z) which can only be represented in Uppercase. Additionally, I will only allow octal (8 and 9 are not allowed). To further simplify matters, I will only have 5 special characters (+ - space . ,) and 4 hidden characters (CR, LF, EOL, and ESC). I don’t care about Parity (my machines will be perfect). How many bits do I need to fully represent the entire character set?

 

See Answer

 

3.b.   What is the formula to calulate "How many messages we could transmit for a given number of bits?", and how does it differ from the formula for "How many messages we could transmit for a given number of bits?"

 

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3.c.   How would we apply this formula in decimal and binary? How many digits would it take to represent  the value 123 in decimal and binary?

 

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3.d. How can the number of digits required to represent  messages be a real number?

 

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4.   I have built a new computer that operates at 32.76 MHz. Theoretically, how many times could I change the signal it contains in 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 13 seconds?

 

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4.b.  How many digits would we need to represent the values 18, 789, and 10956 in binary?

 

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5.   How many bits would I need to:

 

a.      represent all lower case characters?

b.     represent all states in the United States?

c.      represent all individuals in the United States (assume 250 Million)?

d.     represent the National Deficit (1998: Approximately $4.5 Trillion)?

 

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6.   How much Information could I represent given

 

a.      5 bits?

b.     11 bits?

c.      24 bits?

d.     138 bits?

 

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6.a.  Using ‘0’ and ‘1’ to represent ‘off’ and ‘on’ bits, show ALL of the possible combinations available if I had 5 bits.

 

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7.  Explain what a byte is, why it is called a byte, and how many characters can be repre­sented.

 

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7.a.  How did computer architects determine how many bits were needed?

 

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7.b.  We know that KiloByte is 210 = 1024 bytes. What are some other prefixes used with Bytes?

 

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8.   How many bytes are in a kilobyte (exactly)? Why?

 

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9.  Explain why parity bits were created. Explain the difference between odd and even parity. Given the following bit patterns, show how they would be represented (for the given parity):

 

a.      100 (odd parity)                                                 c.    110101 (odd parity)

b.     100 (even parity)                                               d.    110101 (even parity)

 

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9.a  Does Parity catch all errors? Why not? Give some examples of ‘bad’ parity.

 

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9.b.  How is the term ‘Debugging’ related to the term parity?.

 

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10. Explain why the data type character is referred to as an abstract data type.

 

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11. Explain what ASCII and EBCDIC are. Why are they different?

 

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11.a. Why was ASCII Created?

 

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11.b.  Why didn’t IBM adopt ASCII?

 

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11.c.  What are the ASCII codes for the following characters:

 

a.   NULL                                      g.   0 (zero)

b.   BEL                                        h.   7

c.   BackSpace                            i.    A

d.   CR                                          j.    M

e.   ESC                                       k.   a

f.    Space                                     l.    t

 

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11.001  Explain what Unicode is, why it was developed, and how many characters can be represented.

 

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11.002  What are some of the proposed new characters in Unicode?

 

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11.005  What are some of the problems with Unicode?

 

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12. Describe what an ASCII file is. Are there such things as EBCDIC Files?

 

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12.a. Are Word and Excel ASCII files?  Why or why not?

 

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13. What is a binary file?

 

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