In the ASCII chart on page 59, notice that each of the binary values has eight bits, but the first bit is always 0.  ASCII does not use this bit in representing characters, but since bits are grouped in eights (a byte), this bit will always be zero.  Since only 7 bits are actually used in computing the maximum number of characters to represent, how many characters are in the ASCII character set?  Be sure to show the math in your answer.

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128.  2 to the 7th power equals 128.  ?More answer not mentioned in the text ... If all eight bits were used (as with EBCDIC - used in mainframes), there would be 256 different characters.  The eighth bit was used for data transmission error checking to ensure the data was being transmitted accurately.

Computer Science & Information Technology

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