Thread: PBASIC sucks
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Unread 21-01-2003, 21:15
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Quote:
Originally posted by Dave Flowerday
The Stamp that we're using is based on a Scenix SX28AC microcontroller which is an 8 bit unit. Typically when someone refers to the "bits" of a processor it is referring to the maximum size of integer that the processor can operate on. What this means is that, at the assembly language level, an 8 bit processor can only perform operations on 8 bit numbers. So the assembly level "add" command on an 8 bit controller can only add 2 8 bit numbers. However, you can still do 16, 32, or whatever bit math by operating on the numbers in 8 bit quantities. So if an 8 bit processor wants to add 2 16 bit numbers, it first adds the lower 8 bits of the two numbers then adds the upper 8 bits of both numbers plus the carry bit from the previous operation. I hope I'm making sense here as I can tell I'm not explaining it very well.

Anyway the bottom line is when the Stamp works with 16 bit values it is really being translated into a series of 8 bit operations inside the microcontroller running the stamp interpreter.
Ah, that makes sense.
What would the resultant of this be, does it overflow, whats the actual resultant though in binary?

01001010 10011101 +
11001010 10100101
^^
20010101 01000010
1 00010101 01000010
00010101 01000010
... any ideas? I haven't had time to look this up. The question always comes up when I'm away from my computer.
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