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Thread ID: 116630 2011-03-13 04:02:00 bit and Bytes 101 lostsoul62 (16011) Press F1
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1185708 2011-03-13 04:02:00 Everyone knows that there are 8 bits to a Byte. It's been 30 years since I went to school for this so here it goes. A modem like dial up there is 10 bits to every Byte sent and I guess it is that way sending data over the Internet now a days. On a hard drive you have to have a bit between every Byte so I'm thinking is a total of 10 bits for every Byte or did they change something in the last 30 years? lostsoul62 (16011)
1185709 2011-03-13 04:22:00 Not, it's still 8 bits to a bite I believe, but last I read up on it was years ago. nerd (109)
1185710 2011-03-13 04:26:00 Definitely 8 bits to a byte. A bite, however, is somewhat different. Snorkbox (15764)
1185711 2011-03-13 04:35:00 Everyone knows that there are 8 bits to a Byte. It's been 30 years since I went to school for this so here it goes. A modem like dial up there is 10 bits to every Byte sent and I guess it is that way sending data over the Internet now a days. On a hard drive you have to have a bit between every Byte so I'm thinking is a total of 10 bits for every Byte or did they change something in the last 30 years?Still 8 bits to a byte - that's never changed, and there's no such thing as a 10-bit byte - but different word lengths have been used for various things over the years (e.g. 7-bit ASCII).

I'm not quite sure what you're on about with the modems - are you talking about the error-correction overhead? If so, this has nothing to do with the size of a byte.

If error-correction wasn't what you were talking about, can you please clarify what it is that you're actually asking? Your original post was somewhat vague.
Erayd (23)
1185712 2011-03-13 04:58:00 There is a difference between a decimal kilobyte (1000 bytes to a kilobyte) and a kilobyte (1024 bytes to a kilobyte, or kibibyte) if that's what you're after... pcuser42 (130)
1185713 2011-03-13 05:43:00 4 bits are called a nibble :D jwil1 (65)
1185714 2011-03-13 06:00:00 And 2 bits is a quarter (en.wikipedia.org(money)), eh SJ.;) feersumendjinn (64)
1185715 2011-03-13 08:40:00 Yeah, I believe he's talking about transmission and storage overheads / formatting data, etc. like cluster / sector and addressing info on HDDs and checksums and addressing/routing info with transmitted data.

I don't know that there is a fixed ratio of these bits per byte used - there will be reasonably typical estimates of this overhead, but I'd be totally clueless as to their proportions.
In the bad old days of earlier storage media I believe the proportion of stored bits to total bits used was about 3:5
eg a 1.44MB floppy had about 2.5MB actually written to its surface. The drive firmware or the OS took care of the addressing stuff, leaving us to see the remaining 1.44MB of storage space.
Paul.Cov (425)
1185716 2011-03-13 08:49:00 Although you do come across common transmission schemes where the overhead adds up to 10 bits (raw serial is often 1 start bit, 8 data bits [or 7 plus parity] & 1 stop bit), a byte is always 8 bits. With the modulation & compression you find even on quite old modem standards, 10 bits per byte wouldn't accurately describe what went over the wire by any means, but might describe what happens prior to modulation & after demodulation.

The French got this one right, as they use octet, which makes it clearer.
MushHead (10626)
1185717 2011-03-13 13:36:00 I know this is a techie question and only about one and ten might know it. As I tried to say 8 bits = 1 Byte and everyone knows it. Everyone knows that there 1 kilobit = 1024 bits. When you send data anywhere you will be sending 9+ bits for every Byte and I guarantee that. Are we on the same page so re read my original post? lostsoul62 (16011)
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