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Logic gates are the fundamental building blocks of digital circuits. In this episode, we take a look at the four most basic gates: AND, OR, exclusive-OR, and the inverter, and show how an XOR gate can be used to compare two digital values.

By examining Run Length Limited (RLL) coding, we discover a way to compress the ones and zeros of our binary data by using differential coding. We also chat a bit about magnetic storage media.

By examining Run Length Limited (RLL) coding, we discover a way to compress the ones and zeros of our binary data by using differential coding. We also chat a bit about magnetic storage media.

In this episode, we continue our discussion of line codes by examining five schemes used with polar and bipolar signaling: NRZ-L, NRZ-I, RZ-AMI, Manchester, and differential Manchester. We also discuss differential coding and its benefits.

When sending digital data from one device to another, both devices must agree on how to represent ones and zeros. This episode presents how signal levels affect the delivery of data and how line codes are used to represent the ones and the zeros.

ASCII was developed when every computer was an island and over 35 years before the first emoji appeared. In this episode, we will take a look at how Unicode and UTF-8 expanded ASCII for ubiquitous use while maintaining backwards compatibility.

In 1963, the American Standards Association released a standard defining an 8-bit method to represent letters, punctuation, and control characters. This episode examines ASCII so that we can begin to see how computers represent language.

Regardless of the numeric base, scientific notation breaks numbers into three parts: sign, mantissa, and exponent. In this episode, we discuss how the computer stores those three parts to memory, and why IEEE 754 puts them together the way it does.

Up to this point, we've limited our discussion to binary integers. In this episode, we are moving the curtain to reveal the powers of two to the right of the binary point in order to begin representing fractions.

It turns out that twos complement is just one of many ways to use binary to represent negative numbers. In this episode, we examine the use of offset or biased notation to represent signed integers.