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Assignment#2

The document discusses the history and capacities of storage devices for personal computers from 1980 to present. It notes that in the 1980s, CDs and CD-ROMs were introduced as optical storage. In the 1990s, other optical storage like DVDs became more widely used, and electronic storage devices like flash memory cards were developed. Magnetic storage like hard disks remained important. The document predicts future developments in optical laser-based discs and holographic storage.

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huma1984
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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342 views

Assignment#2

The document discusses the history and capacities of storage devices for personal computers from 1980 to present. It notes that in the 1980s, CDs and CD-ROMs were introduced as optical storage. In the 1990s, other optical storage like DVDs became more widely used, and electronic storage devices like flash memory cards were developed. Magnetic storage like hard disks remained important. The document predicts future developments in optical laser-based discs and holographic storage.

Uploaded by

huma1984
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ASSIGNMENT#2

Q1- Compare ASCII and EBCDIC text


codes?
What is ASCII?
ASCII is the American Standard Code
for Information Interchange. There are
many variants of this standard,
typically to allow different code pages
for language encoding, but they all
basically follow the same format. ASCII
is quite elegant in the way it
represents characters, and it is very
easy to write code to manipulate
upper/lowercase and check for valid
data ranges.
ASCII is essentially a 7-bit code which
allows the 8th most significant bit
(MSB) to be used for error checking,
however most modern computer
systems tend to use ASCII values of
128 and above for extended character
sets.
Eg spc

! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /


0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
@ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
p q r s t u v w x y z { ¦ } ~ del

What is EBCDIC?
EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded
Decimal Interchange Code) is a
character encoding set used by IBM
mainframes.
EBCDIC uses the full 8 bits available to
it, so parity checking cannot be used
on an 8 bit system. Also, EBCDIC has a
wider range of control characters than
ASCII.
The character encoding is based on
Binary Coded Decimal (BCD), so the
contiguous characters in the
alphanumeric range are formed up in
blocks of up to 10 from 0000 binary to
1001 binary. Non alphanumeric
characters are almost all outside the
BCD range.
There are four main blocks in the
EBCDIC code page: 0000 0000 to 0011
1111 is reserved for control
characters; 0100 0000 to 0111 1111
are for punctuation; 1000 0000 to
1011 1111 for lowercase characters
and 1100 0000 to 1111 1111 for
uppercase characters and numbers.
There are several different dialects of
EBCDIC, and these tend to differ in the
punctuation coding. The following
table uses some fairly common
EBCDIC codings.
Why EBCDIC is better than ASCII
EBCDIC is easier to use on punched
cards and included the "cent sign" (¢)
character that ASCII does not.
Why ASCII is better than EBCDIC
Reason 1: Writing code
EBCDIC is a mess. The lack of
contiguous character blocks makes
coding a real pain.

Reason 2: Talking to the outside


world
Most of the world runs on ASCII. Even
in IBM mainframe environments, host
PCs, terminals and printers may use
ASCII as their native character set.
Standard versions of EBCDIC miss out
the ASCII characters []\{}^~¦and
include the ¢ sign, so there isn't even
a direct match between them.
Worse still, some of the missing ASCII
characters are in the UUencoding
range, so it will tend to corrupt
standard Internet mail attachments. A
process called XXencoding helps with
this issue, but this is a rarely used way
of encoding attachments. This can
cause a problem even if the EBCDIC
system is only a mail relay

Q2- The growth in capacity of PC


storage devices, from 1980 to
present?
From the beginning of mankind, man
tried to find a way to store information
for the following generations. When
people nowadays hear the word
storage or computer storage they
normally think about CD Rom, USB
key or DVD. Things like the floppy
disk or the punch card are nearly
forgotten. In fact, the history of
information storage goes back to pre-
historic times where mankind used red
and yellow ochre, hematite,
manganese oxide and charcoal to
paint information about their life on
rock walls, caves and ceilings.

Between 1980 and 2000 there were two new


techniques of digital data storing introduced.
At the beginning of the 1980s the first optical
devices, the CD and the CD-ROM were released.
In the middle of the 1990s these and several
other optical devices started to get more and
more important and nowadays they are widely
used. Exactly at that time the first electronic
devices were developed. These devices, e.g.
Compact Flash Cards, Memory Sticks etc.,
are very small but they can store a lot of data
and so they find their use in digital cameras,
PDAs etc. But nevertheless the development of
the magnetic devices did not stop, several new
technologies like the Advanced Intelligent
Tape were introduced and the main hard disc in
a pc is still based on magnetic technology.
In the 21st century the development of the
technologies will lead us from the now widely
used optical devices to the laser device up to
holographic memories. In 2003 the first blue-
laser based disc, the Blue-ray disc, was released
and the first PC drives are to be expected in
2006. Several other “versions” of the DVD, e.g.
HD-DVD have been released or are planned to,
all modified to store more and more data and to
gain faster access. The real next generation of
data storage will be holographic memories,
but this is yet to come.

Q3-The history of Pentium family’s


processors.what are the latest
technologies for Intel Pentium
processors

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