eli5: 8 bit consoles

525 viewsOtherTechnology

What exactly do people mean when they say the NES was an 8 bit console? I know that a bit in computer terms is a single piece of data that can be 1 or 0, but 8 of these doesn’t sound like enough to do all of the things you’d need to play a game like Mario. So what element of the console was 8 bits?

In: Technology

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The main part is the word size of the CPU. We send 8 bits from memory to the processor. The CPU treats those 8 bits as a number from 0-255, and can do various operations on that number.

Now, you’re right that 0-255 isn’t a lot to work with on its own, but we can use several of these. In a similar way to how we can make a lot of numbers with just the digits 0-9.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.