Author Topic: Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary  (Read 4560 times)

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Offline Ephraim B

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Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary
« on: February 11, 2015, 12:53:20 pm »
I'm dreaming of making my own company with a future friend of mine and I want to change technology completely. I want to change Binary based computers to Decimal based, make a touch screen computer built into the wall, projector based instead of pixel based. There won't be any more need of paint since a the computer will change the color of the wall to any color you want. I'm sure computer programming will be much more easier since you won't need to program every pixel and Decimal based computers would be more faster than Binary based computers. What's the best way to start this huge project which will be the biggest change to computers since the 1980's?





Offline TravisE

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Re: Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2015, 01:03:59 pm »
The concept of decimal computers actually isn't new; check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_computer
I'm not sure there would be a huge improvement in speed, though. Binary circuits are ideal; the simplicity of on vs. off is what makes them so fast and reliable (and cheap), plus it's straightforward enough to convert to and from decimal (or even emulate decimal arithmetic directly).

I think I've heard of the color-changing wall idea, but don't remember where. I think it involved some kind of OLED coating or something. I'm not sure what you mean by projector-based; all projectors I know of still use pixels. A vector-based display system using shapes instead of pixels might be possible; there were videogame arcade machines made that used that concept. It's just a different way of doing things; whether it's easy or hard depends on what you're actually trying to draw. If you wanted to display a video or bitmap image, though, you'd still have to deal with pixels.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2015, 01:09:58 pm by TravisE »
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Offline Xeda112358

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Re: Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2015, 01:06:05 pm »
How would a decimal computer be faster? Binary is definitely faster for most math algorithms. The projector idea seems more like you want a non-discrete display which would be cool. I've personally thought of how cool it would be to make a screen that instead of plotting pixels, it would plot basic geometric shapes.

Also, a side note: decimal is no better than binary. Humans started to count in decimal because it was natural to use a 1-1 map of each digit (finger digit, not numerical digit) to objects. It has been passed down generation to generation, but had you learned to count in binary instead, binary would be easier as there are a lot more tricks you can do with it. By the way, you can count to 1023 using your digits, whereas the 10-state system our ancestors have passed down only let us count to 10.

Offline Ephraim B

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Re: Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary
« Reply #3 on: February 11, 2015, 01:09:08 pm »
What I mean by projector based is instead of converting from a pixel based computer to a projector, you program directly to the projector.





Offline Eeems

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Re: Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2015, 01:15:30 pm »
What I mean by projector based is instead of converting from a pixel based computer to a projector, you program directly to the projector.
I don't understand how this is different than current implementations. We send the data directly to the projector to display.
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Offline TravisE

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Re: Computers based on Decimal instead of Binary
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2015, 01:16:13 pm »
The projector idea seems more like you want a non-discrete display which would be cool. I've personally thought of how cool it would be to make a screen that instead of plotting pixels, it would plot basic geometric shapes.

Yeah, that would be like those vector-based CRTs in certain old videogames. I once saw a TV program that used lasers to project color vector images (even some true 3-D systems were proposed). The drawback then was that the complexity of images was limited due of the time it took to scan all the different points of the image. But if you had a system fast enough to scan a raster, you could support vector and bitmapped displays. If it was really, really fast, you might be able to directly render scalable fonts which would be awesome for reading. ;D
« Last Edit: February 11, 2015, 01:21:11 pm by TravisE »
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