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bootloadernoob
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Posted by bootloadernoob: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 04:07 PM
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Hi,

I'm looking at getting a new flash memory, but I'm trying to understand the sizes. I was looking at SST39VF040 and M29W320DB. Now the SST39VF says its 4Mb( x8 ) and the M29W320 says 32 Mbit (4Mbx8 or 2Mbx16) are those 2 the same size?
I attached the datasheets I found, just want to make sure i'm not going crazy.

Sorry for again for the noob question.

P.S. I am looking for something much bigger like 32MB if you have any recommendations.

Edit: the M29W320DB pdf is too big so I cant attach it, but its: www.numonyx.com/Documents/Datash...

Attachment(s): 

PDF icon S71150.pdf

Tags:

AVR Microcontrollers, megaAVR and tinyAVR
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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 04:21 PM
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On the whole 'b' (lower case) is used to mean bits and 'B' (upper case) is used to mean bytes.

When talking about memory devices, because the same device can often be used on data buses of differing width (8/16/32 or even 64) the size is usually quoted in bits.

So 4Mb means literally that - 4 million BITs of storage. How you choose to use them will depend on the architecture you attach it to. If it's 8 bit wide then it'll give you 512KB of storage and, in the traditional sense, however wide the bus, it's always going to be a 512KB device. But if you attached it to a 16 bit bus then it'd actually be providing 256K locations of "word width" storage. On a 32 bit bus it'd be 128K locations of storage and so on.

A further complication (though it's taking a while to catch on) is that the hard drive manufacturers hijacked the terms K, M and G to now mean "powers of 10" so 1M means 1,000,000 whereas us old programmer think 1M means 1024*1024 = 1048576 (that is "powers of 2") so we've been forced to move over to using KibiByte, MebiByte and GibiBytes with symbols Ki, Mi and Gi

So when a memory manufacturer talks about a 4Mb device he doesn't mean one with 4,000,000 storage bits in it but one with 4,194,304 bits in and he really should have said "Mib". When we then wire that up to 8 wires and say it has 512KB we really mean 512KiB

One of my pet peeves (apart from this stupid hijack) is places that use 'b' and 'B' interchangably. How many web sites are offering 8Gb iTouch's this Christams. If it really only has 1GiB or, worse, 1GB of storage I'd be really peeved. They probably meant 8GB or, more correctly, 8GiB

Cliff

PS It was only after I pointed it out to them, having sold about 4 million, that Sky TV in Europe changed the labelling of their PVRs to stop saying they had 80Gb hard drives in them.

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Nephazz
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Posted by Nephazz: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 07:39 PM
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I know what you'r talking about but I don't get the hang of that "power of 2" stuff, though. In the glorious SI system its: m = 10^(-3) k = 10^3, M = 10^6 etc.
What's a ki? Can't be 2^3 :D

By the way: Why does USA etc still calculate in foot and inch? Dividing by 12 kinda sucks. Do tests at US universitys use "Fahrenheit"? "0 Kelvin" is way too cool to be replaced by −459,67 °F ;)

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 07:53 PM
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Well you would agree that 1024 is a power of 2 (it's 2^10 in fact) while 1000 is a power of 10 (it's 10^3 in fact) ?

So us programmers tend to thing in terms of 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8192,16384,32768,65536,131072,262144,524288,1048576 and we have special names for 1024 and 1048576 that we used to call Kilobyte and Megabyte and we all agreed that the word Kilobyte meant 1024 and Megabyte meant 1048576

Then hard drive manufacturers cam along and tried to short change their customers so when they talked about a 10MB drive they just meant 10,000,000 byte drive and not a 10 * 1048576 (or, if you prefer 10 * 1024 * 1024) byte drive. One of those is a power of 2 and one is a power of 10.

So they stole "Kilobyte" and "Megabyte" and in the year 2000 I think it was they managed to get the IEEE persuaded (probably because a number of the committee worked for HD manufacturers) that now Kilo an Mega would have their true SI meaning and new names and symbols (Kibi (ki) and Mebi (Mi)) would be needed for those power of 2 numbers instead.

So an ATmega64 is NOT a 64KB chip it is now a 64KiB chip apparently.

I don't remember being asked my opinion or to vote on this fundamental rewriting of the history of computer science though.

Cliff

(I blame Napoleon!)

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 08:11 PM
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Quote:

Dividing by 12 kinda sucks.

Not for those of us with an extra finger on each hand. (Dividing by 10 in an AVR sucks, too. As far as the notation, use whatever base you want and dividing by the base becomes easier.)

Quote:

Why does USA etc still calculate in foot and inch?

'Cause it is so much more interesting than 1 millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole, through Paris? (Like there is no ppm variation in whatever method was used to do that--such as the thickness of the ice at said pole, and the obstruction of Santa's workshop. Duh.) It is MUCH more interesting to measure barleycorns--we can all relate to that.
http://www.iofm.net/community/ki...

Quote:
Inch: At first an inch was the width of a man's thumb. In the 14th century, King Edward II of England ruled that 1 inch equal 3 grains of barley placed end to end lengthwise.

Hand: A hand was approximately 5 inches or 5 digits (fingers) across. Today, a hand is 4 inches and is used to measure horses (from the ground to the horse's withers, or shoulder).

Span: A span was the length of the hand stretched out, about 9 inches.

Foot: In ancient times, the foot was 11 1/42 inches. Today it is 12 inches, the length of the average man's foot.

Yard: A yard was originally the length of a man's belt or girdle, as it was called. In the 12th century, King Henry I of England fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to the thumb of his out-stretched arm. Today it is 36 inches, about the distance from nose to out-stretched arm of a man.

Cubit: In ancient Egypt, a cubit was the distance from the elbow to the fingertips. Today a cubit is 18 inches.

Lick: A Lick was used by the Greeks to measure the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the index finger.

Pace: The ancient Roman soldiers marched in paces, which were the length of a double step, about 5 feet; 1,000 paces was a mile. Today, a pace is the length of one step, 21/2 to 3 feet.


Now, remember the 'Freaks T-shirt promotion, and the Scandinavian definition of "extra large"? Review the origin of "yard" above and then you'll know why us "Americans" (ouch--not that again) think big.

Happy holidays, everyone. ;) Lee

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Nephazz
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Posted by Nephazz: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 08:47 PM
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Quote:
Dividing by 10 in an AVR sucks, too. As far as the notation, use whatever base you want and dividing by the base becomes easier

Ah yeah, we had to write a divide by 10 routine in ASM at university. I always prefered dividing by 2 ;)
Quote:
So us programmers tend to thing in terms of 1,2,4,8,16,32

ACK ^^
Quote:
Well you would agree that 1024 is a power of 2 (it's 2^10 in fact)

ah ok, here we go.
Quote:
So they stole "Kilobyte" and "Megabyte" and in the year 2000 I think it was they managed to get the IEEE persuaded

lol, the IEEE changed it? crazy ... can't they think of a better name than Kibi?! Sounds like "Kiba" - a drink in germany, cherry and banana juice. Or like the name of a pet or a toy, pf.

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Koshchi
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Posted by Koshchi: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 09:04 PM
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Quote:
A further complication (though it's taking a while to catch on) is that the hard drive manufacturers hijacked the terms K, M and G

This is not quite true. The hard drive manufacturers simply used the abbreviations as they were defined by the international standards board (which was set in the mid 70s) instead of the normally accepted use of them when applied to bits and bytes (which was not part of the standard). Of course they did so in order to make their drives look bigger than their competitors. It was because of things like this that the board then added the new specifications in order to avoid ambiguity.

That said, I for one will always use M to mean "* 1024" when applied to bytes.

Regards,
Steve A.

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Bronze MarkJohanEkdahl
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Posted by JohanEkdahl: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 09:34 PM
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Quote:

can't they think of a better name than Kibi?!

Wikipedia wrote:

The names for the new standard are derived from the original SI prefixes followed by "binary", such as "kilobinary", and can be shortened to a prefix like "kibi-".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin...

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Posted by theusch: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 09:36 PM
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Quote:

lol, the IEEE changed it? crazy ... can't they think of a better name than Kibi?!

It is actually an honorary term such as ohm and ampere. In this case, it pays homage to the Japanese contributions to electronics, consumer devices, computers, etc. as an adaptation of "kibei" -- A person born in the United States of Japanese immigrant parents and educated chiefly in Japan.

;) Lee

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Bronze Markbobgardner
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Posted by bobgardner: Wed. Dec 17, 2008 - 09:36 PM
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Kibbles n Bits. Its a puppy chow.

Imagecraft compiler user

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snarflemike
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Posted by snarflemike: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 01:51 AM
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Nephazz wrote:

By the way: Why does USA etc still calculate in foot and inch? Dividing by 12 kinda sucks. Do tests at US universitys use "Fahrenheit"? "0 Kelvin" is way too cool to be replaced by −459,67 °F ;)

Dude, you totally gave yourself away there. It's -459 . 67 °F :)

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jgmdesign
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Posted by jgmdesign: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 02:26 AM
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We like to use feet and inches because of the old saying........

"Keep a foot in the door" :lol:

I have another reason, but since this is a family website I must keep it to myself. :oops: :wink:

JIm

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Nephazz
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Posted by Nephazz: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 05:15 AM
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Quote:
Dude, you totally gave yourself away there. It's -459 . 67 °F :)

uh, lol :D Had to read like 5 times to get it ^^

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 09:48 AM
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Koshchi wrote:
That said, I for one will always use M to mean "* 1024" when applied to bytes.

Personally I'll always use K for that. ;)

(I'll save M for "* 1024 * 1024")

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Diff
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Posted by Diff: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 11:57 AM
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Nephazz wrote:
Why does USA etc still calculate in foot and inch?

Yes, they still do. But news says they are approaching the metric system inch by inch.

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 02:31 PM
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Quote:

uh, lol Very Happy Had to read like 5 times to get it ^^

See how many of you kids can identify the language. ;) (No Google allowed.)

ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
CONFIGURATION SECTION.
SOURCE-COMPUTER. IBM-ISERIES.
OBJECT-COMPUTER. IBM-ISERIES.
SPECIAL-NAMES. C01 IS TOP-OF-PAGE.
DECIMAL-POINT IS COMMA.
...

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 03:05 PM
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Looks like Bollocks to me :lol:

(or did I get that acronym slightly mis-ordered?)

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Bronze MarkJohanEkdahl
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Posted by JohanEkdahl: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 05:38 PM
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You know that I know, Lee.. Not sure if I qualify as a "kid", though.

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 06:03 PM
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I think both you and Cliff have been around the block too many times to qualify. :lol:

Lee

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Nephazz
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Posted by Nephazz: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 07:00 PM
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Quote:
Yes, they still do. But news says they are approaching the metric system inch by inch.

:D:D

Quote:
See how many of you kids can identify the language;)

Uhm, WCPL?

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emuler
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Posted by emuler: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 07:32 PM
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Quote:

Yes, they still do. But news says they are approaching the metric system inch by inch.

Good one. :D

Give the devil 2.54mm and he’ll take 1.609 km.
28 grams of prevention is worth 453 grams of cure.
Put your best 304.8mm forward.

[EDIT] Typo.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Last Edited: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 09:18 PM
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bwall
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Posted by bwall: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 08:08 PM
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Think you mean 1.6km ;)

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emuler
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Posted by emuler: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 09:18 PM
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Edited. :oops: Thanks bwall.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 09:52 PM
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Quote:

Put your best 304.8mm forward.

"The burglar heard the police coming, and centimetered away from the door."

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Nephazz
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Posted by Nephazz: Thu. Dec 18, 2008 - 10:32 PM
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I heard today that the arabic numbers actually come from asia. Those asian guys used the base-12 system and this is the reason why 0xB and 0xC have their own name (opposed to 0xD++). Furthermore traders used to use the base12. Because it's easier to split dozens than tens.

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stu_san
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Posted by stu_san: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 04:10 PM
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theusch wrote:
How many of you kids can identify the language. ;) (No Google allowed.)

ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
CONFIGURATION SECTION.
SOURCE-COMPUTER. IBM-ISERIES.
OBJECT-COMPUTER. IBM-ISERIES.
SPECIAL-NAMES. C01 IS TOP-OF-PAGE.
DECIMAL-POINT IS COMMA.
...

The real question is how many of us have actually made money programming in that language. And, more to the point, how many of those folks are willing to admit it.

I hear there's a 12-step program for programmers of *****.

Stu (guilty on all counts, but my computer was UNIVAC 1108)

Engineering seems to boil down to: Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two. Sometimes choose only one.

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Posted by theusch: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 04:30 PM
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Quote:
The real question is how many of us have actually made money programming in that language.

Quote:
(guilty on all counts, but my computer was UNIVAC 1108)

Burroughs. The Hatfields and McCoys have now buried the hatchet due to intermarriage, so we are now "ex-cousins" (?) ;) so I can't go on about the futility of trying to do communications and multiprocessing on an 1108, etc.

The funny part of it is that COBOL was a "system" language at Burroughs--the most facilities were available, most low-level hooks, and it was the best choice for performance 'cause under the hood it >>was<< a COBOL machine. We used to look down our noses at FORTRAN programmers.

Then another life brought me to VMS and FORTRAN--the tables were turned; FORTRAN was now the best choice for all the reasons above.

Lee

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 05:18 PM
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24years ago, when I left university I got a tentative job offer involving the offensive language being discussed here. At the end of the training course they "sacked me" because, along with a couple of others we'd been a disruptive influence on the training course (apparently). On Friday of that same week I then had a job interview with Amstrad programming Z80's in Asm instead and the rest is history. Talk about a "lucky scrape"!

Cliff

(the disruption centered around the fact that I'd just spent 3 years being taught structured programming methods in Algol68/Pascal (even some FORTRAN and PL/1 too) and we then had the temerity to question the very non-structured way we were being asked to do things in BOLlOCks)

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Bronze MarkJohanEkdahl
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Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 06:23 PM
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Quote:

Stu (guilty on all counts, but my computer was UNIVAC 1108)

Stu, Soul Brother! Me too!

Although the money I made of it was teaching it. Does that count? Or is it even worse? Like being the C***L pusher, at a street corner at uni. "Hey, wanna try some of this stuff? Your first DATA DIVISION is free!".

And the computer was a UNIVAC 1100! (Not the first computer - that was a Alpha LSI on which I learned BASIC. But it was the second one.)

Did we talk about this before? Deck-o-cards:

@RUN
@ACOB,ISEX

@MAP,NIX
@XQT

@END
Deposit at computing centre. Get results three hours later. Darn! Missed a period after a 

        02 CUSTOMER_NUMBER     PIC 9(5)

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 06:31 PM
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While you can spaghetti to your heart's content in ***** ("ALTER GO-PARA TO PROCEED TO FINISH-UP.")
http://home.swbell.net/mck9/cobo...

Quote:
Almost no one has a good word to say about the COBOL ALTER verb (and with ... If you ever encounter this form of pathology, proceed with extreme caution. ...
when I started a Big B in 1973, in general structured programming approaches were the norm. While you didn't have local variables (when I started; there was a limited form intruduced about 1979) and there were considerations based on limited resources (overlay mechanisms), in general structured programming was possible and practical.

Now, I worked at times at a "lower level" on device drivers for commo and such. So that might involve a few "tricks", just as if are doing an RTOS kernel or FORTH kernel you need to fuss with the stack in the best way.

Lee

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 06:45 PM
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Or is it even worse?

lol -- Yes!

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Koshchi
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Posted by Koshchi: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 08:57 PM
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Deposit at computing centre. Get results three hours later.

At our high school when I was learning BASIC, we didn't even have a computer. We had to send the cards off to another high school and get the results back the next day.

Regards,
Steve A.

The Board helps those that help themselves.

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Bronze MarkJohanEkdahl
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Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 09:06 PM
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OMGHWGA:

Quote:

we didn't even have a computer

Luxury...

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 10:39 PM
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At our high school ... we didn't even have a computer.

Neither did ours, as they hadn't been invented yet.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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Bronze MarkJohanEkdahl
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Posted by JohanEkdahl: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 11:15 PM
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Neither did ours, as they hadn't been invented yet.

Let's see now.. ENIAC was '46 or '47 IIRC. Assuming you are somewhere between 15 and 18 when you attend high school, you where born in '28 to '32. Shouldn't you retire? :wink:

As of January 15, 2018, Site fix-up work has begun! Now do your part and report any bugs or deficiencies here. 

No guarantees, but if we don't report problems they won't get much of  a chance to be fixed! Details/discussions at link given just above.

 

"Some questions have no answers."[C Baird] "There comes a point where the spoon-feeding has to stop and the independent thinking has to start." [C Lawson] "There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."[E Weddington] "Words represent concepts. Use the wrong words, communicate the wrong concept." [J Morin] "Persistence only goes so far if you set yourself up for failure." [Kartman]

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 11:21 PM
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No, that isn't right. I'm sorry; I should have been more clear.

What I meant, was, that HIGH SCHOOL had not been invented yet. ;)

Seriously, it would have been a race with the first versions of JOSS, BASIC, and FOCAL. I'd wager there were very few if any high schools that had digital computers integrated into the curriculum.

Lee

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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zbaird
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Posted by zbaird: Fri. Dec 19, 2008 - 11:40 PM
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Quote:
Deposit at computing centre. Get results three hours later.

Three hour turnaround would have been pretty good at our place most of the time. I worked at the computer center, and spent many many nights there with herds o' nerds because we could get 10 minute turnaround after 2 or 3 in the morning.

Near the end of each semester turnaround would hit 24 to 30 hours as the slackers decided maybe they actually needed to do their assignments. Very similar to what we see here on the forum, only then you had to be a little more creative to successfully cheat.

But you'd learn humility when you had 12 hour turnaround, got your cards back and had a typo, corrected the error after waiting in line for a keypunch, then 12 hours later discovered you reinserted the original card in your deck and threw away the corrected one.

And my favorite was the poor guy who read his textbook listings and saw all the letter Os had slashes to distinguish them from zeroes, so on the keypunch he carefully backspaced over each O and double punched a slash. Needless to say the card reader didn't like illegal punches, so his program didn't get very far.

We had a split shop - business computing (C***L) for the university (payroll, grades, etc.) and scientific (FORTRAN & ASM) for the classes and research. Oil and water. Two separate computer clusters, separate social circles for the most part, shared secretaries.

Oh: IBM 7040 with an IBM 1401 as the input/output device (offline), and a year or so later a Honeywell 635.

Chuck Baird

"I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun." -- Scott Adams

http://www.cbaird.org

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stu_san
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Posted by stu_san: Wed. Dec 24, 2008 - 06:01 AM
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theusch wrote:
The funny part of it is that COBOL was a "system" language at Burroughs--the most facilities were available, most low-level hooks, and it was the best choice for performance 'cause under the hood it >>was<< a COBOL machine. We used to look down our noses at FORTRAN programmers.
HMMMm... In my Computer Architecture class in college (and in the textbook we used) they said the base language of the B5000 series was ALGOL. Oh well, arguments of angels dancing on pinheads, no doubt.

Stu

Engineering seems to boil down to: Cheap. Fast. Good. Choose two. Sometimes choose only one.

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zbaird
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Posted by zbaird: Wed. Dec 24, 2008 - 07:47 PM
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Ah, memories. I also remember being told the Burroughs operating system was written in ALGOL, although that's not that much different from one being written in C. The thing we young nerds were interested in was that it wasn't assembly language; systems programming (and maintenance) was taking a conceptual step forward.

Chuck Baird

"I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun." -- Scott Adams

http://www.cbaird.org

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angelu
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Posted by angelu: Wed. Dec 24, 2008 - 10:12 PM
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Long time ago, when humans started to write, they just draw different objects, animals, creating Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Later, they felt the need to measure distances. Having no measuring units standardised, having no tools for measurement, they took a look at them self and discovered the thumb. The thumb you have always with you, and everyone have a thumb - cheap tool :). Later, they needed to measure biger lengths, so they just used the thumb again and again. The mathematics being poor, maybe the 10 base wasn't used at that time, they discovered the foot being more convenient to measure longer lenghts then using the thumb 12 times. Also, they had no interest to find something 10 times then a thumb or something ten times smaller than a foot. When they needed a smaller unit for one inch, the decimal point was too complicate or not existent, was easy to say, ok, half inch, quarter etc. To multiply or to add, subtract these values was not a necesity.
If I look today to american unit sistem, I find it very similar...
More than this, they developed diferent meanings for the same unit for different purpose, geografic location - ground mile, nautical mile that make the confusion biger.
As the civilisation evolved, the people (the americans not yet)realised there is a need for a sistem, based on 10's numbering sistem, unique on all usage, all geografic areas, and more, with some natural identities. They implemented the meter. The metric system use milimeters, micrometers, nanometers, kilometers, etc. For example one kilogram of wather, weight 1000 grams, have a volume of around 0.1m^3, freeze at 0C, boil at 100C.
One day, I got a quotation from a Canadian company for a DMD insulation foil. I knew the area that I need to use for my product, so I wanted to calculate by mind roughly how much will cost the insulation foil for one product. But ups, the length was expressed in foot and the width in inches.... so I give up.

If you go to buy a drill in us, you will find drills of 1/2'', 3/4'', 7/16'' and so on. If you go in a factory with cnc machines, you will find, aha, they realise the decimal sistem is better and they use it. But lazy to implment it everywhere.
How is easyer to find out which wrench tool is bigger: a 3/4 one or a 7/8 one? What about to compare 11mm with 12 mm ?
The AWG American Wire Gauge sistem, is another example of mind atrophy. Why to push the electrician to calculate the current density through a section of a conductor expressed in square xxx when you can disable his mind, and give him a table to follow ?

Happy holidays, everyone.
George.

PIC32 based Ethernet Shield Arduino Uno hardware compatible

PIC32 based Ethernet Shield with Network Switch Arduino Uno hardware compatible

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Bronze Marktheusch
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Posted by theusch: Thu. Dec 25, 2008 - 12:45 AM
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HMMMm... In my Computer Architecture class in college (and in the textbook we used) they said the base language of the B5000 series was ALGOL.

Quote:

I also remember being told the Burroughs operating system was written in ALGOL,

You are both quite right. The "large-systems" series was indeed "tuned" for the ALGOL, and had some hardware features to enhance stack operations.

I started with the "medium-systems" which was indeed a COBOL machine. In fact, arithmetic and other operations were done in BCD and not binary (about the 3rd generation circa 1975 introduced a few binary accumulators that could be used for certain operations).

Lee

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

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zbaird
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Posted by zbaird: Thu. Dec 25, 2008 - 01:04 AM
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And on the Honeywell systems in the early 70s they introduced an "enhanced" instruction set that had a full complement of BCD instructions. All of a sudden "unlimited" precision was possible, I suppose provided you had unlimited time. I started writing a set of routines for BCD operations but had to abandon it to actually do the work I was getting paid for. It's always something.

Chuck Baird

"I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun." -- Scott Adams

http://www.cbaird.org

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Kagetsuki
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Posted by Kagetsuki: Sat. Jun 20, 2009 - 01:35 PM
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theusch wrote:
Quote:

lol, the IEEE changed it? crazy ... can't they think of a better name than Kibi?!

It is actually an honorary term such as ohm and ampere. In this case, it pays homage to the Japanese contributions to electronics, consumer devices, computers, etc. as an adaptation of "kibei" -- A person born in the United States of Japanese immigrant parents and educated chiefly in Japan.

;) Lee

Is that a joke? The only common use of the term "kibi" that I would know of would be [黍], which in English is apparently "millet" (though image searches for "黍" and "millet" return fairly different plants). Also, I've never heard anyone here abbreviate kilo bytes to "kibi", particularly of note on that point is the fact we say [キロ・バイト] or returned to the alphabet "kiro baito", so even if you wante do make that shorter you'd have to do it like "kiba" or "kibai".

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Sat. Jun 20, 2009 - 01:39 PM
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Is that a joke?

Yes it's a joke - all the new SI names for what we used to call kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte - that is kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte - have simply bolted "bi" (short for "binary") onto the first two letters of the the previous name.

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