Computer Engineering Blog

                 INTRODUCTION The computer system comprises of a functional set of hardware, software, user and data. Hardware consists of the components of computer like memory, processor, storage devices, and Input/output devices. The software may be of different kinds—application software and system software. A computer system may be a single stand-alone system or may consist of several interconnected systems. The user uses the application software to perform various tasks, for example, the user uses word processing software for document preparation. While using the application software, the user uses the storage of a computer—to store a document on the hard disk, to execute a command on the CPU, to retrieve a document from a peripheral device or to print document on printer. For using the hardware, there is a need for software that interacts with both the hardware and the application software. Operating system (OS) is the software that provides an interface between the comp

           SIGNED AND UNSIGNED NUMBERS A binary number may be positive or negative. Generally, we use the symbol “+” and “−” to represent positive and negative numbers, respectively. The sign of a binary number has to be represented using 0 and 1, in the computer. An n-bit signed binary number consists of two parts—sign bit and magnitude. The left most bit, also called the Most Significant Bit (MSB) is the sign bit. The remaining n-1 bits denote the magnitude of the number.   In signed binary numbers, the sign bit is 0 for a positive number and 1 for a negative number. For example, 01100011 is a positive number since its sign bit is 0, and, 11001011 is a negative number since its sign bit is 1. An 8–bit signed number can represent data in the range −128 to +127 (–27 to +27−1). The left-most bit is the sign bit. In an n-bit unsigned binary number , the magnitude of the number n is stored in n bits. An 8–bit unsigned number can represent data in the range 0 to 255 (2