On 02/05/18 10:57, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
Hi,

Nines' complement and ten's complement are to decimal what ones' and
two's are to binary, i.e. you can subtract a number by adding its ten's
complement instead.  Old adding machines would have nines' complement
digits written alongside the normal digit, e.g. 2 by 7.
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comptometer1920Model.jpg
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_complements

I've been reading this book, about half-way through so far, and it seems
ideal for someone that wants to understand how computers work.  It
starts with sending Morse code with torches and builds from there,
through logic gates, implementing arithmetic, counters, memory, assembly
language, and finishes off by touching on some real CPUs, character
encodings, what an operating system does, and floating point numbers.
I'd guess reading age could be a bright twelve-year-old upwards.
     Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software,
     by Charles Petzold  https://amzn.to/2J7FEjb

Nick is considering Manjaro Linux instead of sticking with Kubuntu or
moving to Xubuntu.  It's a rolling release distro, so no `upgrade the
world' periodic shock, based on Arch Linux, but with a graphical
installer, and a delay between a package being in Arch's `bleeding edge'
`stable' and it making it to Manjaro's `stable'.
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjaro_Linux

Cheers, Ralph.

from my playing:

   Ah, well, if you're bored then you might be interested in trying

   https://manjaro.org/  I haven't, but it's an Arch Linux derivative

   with... a GUI installer!  The download page looks to have KDE
   flavour. -Ralph

That kept me from being bored. I downloaded the KDE version, and every time I booted it, my screen displayed a message " out of range " which implies that it cannot adjust the resolution to that of this ancient Toshiba 15".  This is a condition that I have seen years ago when a computer could not set the screen size. I  think that it is 'working' because every time I hit a key the CD runs up.  I booted into SolyDK and that worked OK, as does everything else.


Also talked about Via  and new Firefox browsers on Android,
Raspberry Pi GPIO usage especially via Deek-Robot.

Peter
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