Reply
Mon 28 Jul, 2008 02:37 pm
Hello there. my name is derick. and i hope that you will be able to help me with a rather unique question i think. i wanted to ask a question regarding the foundation of personal computers. would you happen to know about the first pcs. i was curious about how they created the different structures or shapes of alphabets, symbols for display on the monitor in the early days. like how would they calculate or make a binary solution for a letter, symbol, etc to be understood by computer and displayed on the monitor or stored in the memory. did they scan the drawing, or use a sketch pad to automatically store it in the memory. or how else would they have made it happen. By the way I am not asking about how monitors work but just about the binary solution. your answer would be most helpful. I shall look forward to your reply. Thank you
Derick
A typical scheme was where each character was stored as 8 successive bytes in read-only memory. If a bit was a 1 the pixel was lit. If the bit was a 0 it was unlit. (or vice-versa). Below is how a figure 1 was stored using such a scheme.
They probably did it on graph paper or like I just did it here by typing.
00000000 =0
00001000 =8
00011000 =24
00001000 =8
00001000 =8
00001000 =8
00001000 =8
00111110 =62
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace