CourseHES 213

Week10 of 16

SemesterII

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This week’s topics

Storing text: ASCII and Unicode

Character sets
Why Unicode was needed

What you will be able to do

3.1 Explain how text, images and sound are represented in binary.

Activity

Convert a short word to ASCII codes and back.

Study materials

Further resources

Introduction to Computer Science, 5.3: Character Representation · PDF · OpenStax Introduction to Computer Science (2024), 5.3 section on ASCII and Unicode, pp. 208–209 · for registered students
Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, 2.1.5: Representing Strings · PDF · Bryant & O'Hallaron, CS:APP 2e manuscript sample, 2.1.5: how text is stored as ASCII codes (a step up), p. 43 · for registered students

Materials marked “for registered students” open in the student portal, which is set up as soon as you receive final acceptance.

Week 9 Week 11

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Course plan

Week 1: What is a computer system?
Week 2: Hardware: the parts of a computer
Week 3: Software: system and application software
Week 4: The CPU and the fetch-execute cycle
Week 5: Memory: RAM, ROM and cache
Week 6: What an operating system does
Week 7: Comparing operating systems
Midterm: Midterm evaluation
Week 9: Bits and bytes: units of storage
Week 10: Storing text: ASCII and Unicode
Week 11: Storing images: pixels and colour depth
Week 12: Storing sound: sampling
Week 13: Storage devices
Week 14: Choosing a computer for a job
Week 15: Review and coursework completion
Final: Final assessment and submission

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