Application
The BIOS in many personal computers stores the date and time in BCD because the MC6818 real-time clock chip used in the original IBM PC AT motherboard provided the time encoded in BCD. This form is easily converted into ASCII for display.
The Atari 8-bit family of computers used BCD to implement floating-point algorithms. The MOS 6502 processor used has a BCD mode that affects the addition and subtraction instructions.
Early models of the PlayStation 3 store the date and time in BCD. This led to a worldwide outage of the console on 1 March 2010. The last two digits of the year stored as BCD were misinterpreted as 16 causing a paradox in the unit's date, rendering most functionalities inoperable.
Read more about this topic: Binary-coded Decimal
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)