Re: [stella] What's magic about a byte?

Subject: Re: [stella] What's magic about a byte?
From: Ruffin Bailey <rufwork@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 21:57:02 -0400
On Apr 13, 2005, at 4:23 PM, Adam Wozniak wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Ruffin Bailey wrote:
>> Okay, we all know that every bit is sacred, but, out of curiosity, why
>> are there 8 bits in a byte as opposed to 10 or 3?
>
> 8 is a power of 2.  2^3 = 8
>
>  4 is also a power of 2, but it's too small to represent a character.
> 16 is also a power of 2, but it's way overkill to represnt a character.

Why would the number of bits in a byte have to have anything to do with 
powers of 2?  The max number, whether 7 bit, 13 bit, or 8 bit would 
still be a binary number.  ??

Ruffin Bailey

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