Star Micronics 8 Series - Star LaserPrinter 8 Software

STAR LASERPRINTER 8 SOFTWARE
Binary and hexadecimal arithmetic
If you alreadyknow what hexadecimalnumbers are, you can skip this
sectionandgo aheadto readaboutASCII.
The decimalnumbersystemwith whichwe’reall familiaris a positional
counting system. There’s the
“ones” position,the “tens” position,the
“hundreds”positionandsoon.Eachhigherpositionisworthtcntimesmore
thanthepositionto therightofit,sincethedecimalsystemusesthebaseof
ten.Moreover,weneedtensymbolsto showtheactualvaluesthatmaybe
in eachposition.
Thebinarysystemispositionaltoo.There’sthe“ones”position,the“twos”
position,the“fours”position,the“eights”positionandsoon.Inbinaryeach
positionisworthonlytwicethatofthepositiontoitsright.Andweonlyneed
twosymbols-O (zero)and1(one)-to showthevaluesthatmaybe inany
position.So in binarywegetnumbersthatlooklike 1010or 10001100.
Thehexadecimalsystemismadeofbase-sixteennumbers.Hexadecimalis
positionalliketheothercountingsystems.Andeachhigherpositionisworth
sixteentimesasmuchasthepositionto its right.
We need sixteendifferentsymbolsto show all the possiblevaluesone
hexadecimaldigit could have. We can use our decimal system’s ten
symbols,butwe’vehadto borrowa fewmorefromour alphabetto getall
thesymbolsweneed.Inhexadecimal,therefore,youcanhaveanumberthat
lookslike2C7C,or evenFACE.
Here’showthedecimal,binaryandhexadecimalnumbersystemscompare:
Decimal
o
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Binary
Ooo1
0010
0011
0100
0101
0110
0111
Hexadecimal
o
1,
2
3
4
5
6
7
Decimal
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Binary
1(W3
1001
1010
1o11
1100
1101
1110
1111
Hexadecimal
8
9
A
B
c
D
E
F
5