/` Computer 101 /` (part 2) : Addressing and Computation of Bytes & Bits

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rofthorax
January 23, 2009

This is a set of videos I just pulled out of my ass in about 2-3 hours bored this morning and figured there was a need to elaborate on this, though I may have talked about it in the past, but mainly for people who hear me giving all these terms and them flying over head or in one ear and out the back..

So I thought I'd give some perspective so that some terms may hit a wall in the back of the head, slide down, and one would go "oh yes, that thing".

So this video is about addressing and use of bytes in computer operations, and I use a simplified example, just touching on what programming on an Atari 2600 (the first home game system outside of Pong) giving just some idea of what limitations existed on the machine, and to put in perspective how bytes would have been used there.

The other videos are going to cover other uses.. The next video will be on use in computing. Third will be on use in computer graphics. Next on audio, the fifth on use in video, and the sixth talking about some things (loose ends) that may have confused some people.. I expect a lot will be confused, but if you look over the videos a few times, you will figure it out..

Okay, in this video I'd say the major error I might have made is in the number of bits that the 2600 could address with.. Let me see in wikipedia.. I was off by a factor of two.. But maybe a year down the road it would have been better:

""The console had only 128 bytes of RAM for runtime data that included the call stack and the state of the game world. There was no frame buffer, as the necessary RAM would have been too expensive. Instead the video device had two bitmapped sprites, two one-line "missile" sprites, a one-pixel "ball," and a "playfield" that was drawn by writing a bit pattern for each line into a register just before the television scanned that line. As each line was scanned, a game had to identify the non-sprite objects that overlapped the next line, assemble the appropriate bit patterns to draw for those objects, and write the pattern into the register. In a telling reveal of its Pong heritage, by default, the right side of the screen was a duplicate of the left; to control it separately, the software had to modify the patterns as the scan line was drawn. After the controller scanned the last active line, a more leisurely vertical blanking interval began, during which the game could process input and update the positions and states of objects in the world. Any mistake in timing produced visual artifacts, a problem programmers called racing the beam. ""

Now this is not so much of a problem as what they are saying is the memory mapping to the screen had to be switched for one side tot he other.. This could be easily done just by writing out left and right sides of the screen with memory from two spots in ram or rom. And representing multiple sprites involved the same sort of manipulation.. But programmers love these sorts of challenges, it's like a challenge of trying to see how many balls you can juggle with two hands..

Disclaimer:
Overall, I just mean to make it clear, I'm not checking my facts, this is just flying out of my head, and some details are fudged.. But since the computer field is ever changing, it's not possible to be 100% correct about everything, it's reasonable to be inaccurate but approximate. You will find the facts in the wikipedia.. But the relationship between information is something that learning wires into your head, that no information resource can substitute for. I'm just trying to attach some lingering neuron arms here..

Category: Education

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atari 2600 video games small computers limited memory 4K challenge cartridges swapping bits bytes what they mean in real world uses and why use them computer kilobyte megabyte megabit gigabit GB MB Mb Gb Kb KB 1024 256 512 power of two binary boolean thousand million billion storage ram file permissions linux chmod

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/` Computer 101 /` (part 2) : Addressing and Computation of Bytes & Bits

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