02-06-2009, 12:58 PM
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Half-Ass Member
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Cobra Make, Engine: ERA #732, 428FE (447 CID), TKO600, Solid Flat Tappet Cam, Tons of Aluminum
Posts: 22,025
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Not Ranked
Quote:
Originally Posted by 02roush
Why such a high #? What am I missing?
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In a 32 bit environment that is the largest number that a single register on the CPU can hold (a doubleword). In other words, it is 11111111111111111111111111111111, or in hexadecimal FFFFFFFF, or in decimal, 4294967295, or "zero minus one." Back in the old days, your 8088 computer (the one with two 5.25 inch floppies and no hard drive) had a processor with registers that only stored 16 bits, or 1111111111111111, or FFFF, or 65535 (the magic 640k limit of real mode computing, because we used "segments" and "offsets" to reference memory and FFFF was the bigest number you could stuff in to a register). So in the old days, his message count would be 65535. It was just a hiccup in the software that stuffed -1 in to his "message count."  |
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