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From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: The First Distro To Offer XLibre
Date: 1 Jul 2025 03:38:29 GMT
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On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 02:50:58 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 07:59:31 +0530, Not Necessary wrote:
> 
>> Plaintext is just human-readable information codified into a binary
>> format for the hardware to parse / store / transmit.
> 
> But you said “computers can’t understand plaintext, they understand
> binaries”. But if they’re the same thing, then why would computers
> understand one but not the other?

There is an interesting set of videos by a guy working with a 6502. It's a 
current device that is static so you can single step it. Apply power and 
the 6502 jumps to an address, fetches data, and executes it. He has the 
data bus pulled up or down with resistors so that the pattern is a NOP. 
The processor executes the NOP, increments the address, reads the data 
bus, which of course is a NOP, ad infinitum.

So is it reading binary? 

It's an interesting setup since he's using an Arduino for a logic 
analyzer. Since the 6502 doesn't care he can either single step the 
oscillator or run it slow enough for the Arduino to keep up.