How many bytes = a MB ?

Bolgan · Post by **Bolgan** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 9:44 pm

See Topic!

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 9:53 pm

..and what does this have to do with emulation?

Bolgan · Post by **Bolgan** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 10:07 pm

The program I downloaded (newfile) to make a dummy file, wants to know the size of the dummy file in bytes.

Bolgan · Post by **Bolgan** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 10:09 pm

ooops!
I should have put this post in Dreamcast Discussion.

No Name · Post by **No Name** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 10:29 pm

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 3:14 am

That'd be kilobytes. I believe there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte. That makes 1048576 bytes = Megabyte.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 3:20 am

1 byte = 1 byte
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes = 1048576 bytes
1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes = 1048576 kilobytes = 1073741824 bytes
1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes = 1048567 megabytes = 1073741824 kilobytes = 1099511627776 bytes

Phantom · Post by **Phantom** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 6:16 am

Bolgan wrote:How many bytes = a MB ?

That depends on who you ask.

According to the new IEC standard:

1 MB (megabyte) = 1000000 bytes.
1 MiB (mebibyte) = 1048576 bytes.

Have a look at http://www.romulus2.com/articles/guides ... ytes.shtml.

The old standard is ambiguous. The 'MB' on compact discs does not conform to the new standard as it refers to 1048576 bytes.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 7:32 am

Oh yes. That.

The old standard isn't at all ambiguous, until you come to people who manufacture hard drives, who use multiples of 1000 instead of 1024. Nobody else ever used KB meaning 1000, or MB meaning 1000000.

Anyway, what kind of a stupid name is a mebibyte, and how the heck are you supposed to pronounce it. It gets worse - how does a gibibyte sound to you? Tebibyte? Pebibyte? Exbibyte?

finite · Post by **finite** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:04 am

It's ambiguous when it comes to scientific notation, and I'll give them that much. But BlackAura is right, the name they chose is horrid. It just sounds ridiculous, the only people who will use it are the standards organisations themselves, and perhaps a few universities/institutes.

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:29 am

Shouldn't this be in General Help? I mean.. it doesn't look like there is much Dreamcast Discussion in this topic(post is in Dreamcast Discussion atm, could be moved later)

ccb_v2 · Post by **ccb_v2** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:38 am

Convert.zip

Nice little utility.

Phantom · Post by **Phantom** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:50 am

BlackAura wrote:Oh yes. That.

The old standard isn't at all ambiguous, until you come to people who manufacture hard drives, who use multiples of 1000 instead of 1024. Nobody else ever used KB meaning 1000, or MB meaning 1000000.

But everyone has used K meaning 1000, and M meaning 1000000 for ages. Why not apply that to bytes as well? It makes a lot more sense to me to use a different prefix for the 'power-of-2' numbers. I agree that 'mebibyte' and the others sound terrible though.

PhoenixBurn · Post by **PhoenixBurn** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 7:15 pm

finite wrote:It's ambiguous when it comes to scientific notation, and I'll give them that much. But BlackAura is right, the name they chose is horrid. It just sounds ridiculous, the only people who will use it are the standards organisations themselves, and perhaps a few universities/institutes.

And Telstra

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 10:26 pm

As long as you're within the appropriate problem domain (computers, basically) the meanings of K and M shouldn't be ambiguous, but if you start mixing them with non-computer related measurements it might get a little confusing.

I don't know why, but I've started abbreviating them to Ki'byte, Me'byte and Gi'byte. Personally, I think those would sound better than Kibibyte, Mebibyte and so on. Zebibyte and Yobibyte sound even worse.

Orange_Ribbon · Post by **Orange_Ribbon** » Sun Oct 05, 2003 2:34 am

..... don't you mean mega-byte and Gigi-byte? Also blame the metric system for the names. (meter, centi-meter, mega-meter)