Are there any calculators that can calculate in terms of bytes? for example…
say I wanted to multiply 50 bytes times 146, or 200 mb times 30… it would automatically give the result in kilobytes, or megabytes, or gigabytes… and so on and so on…
yes, you’d have to change the base number system from 10 to 8. And that should do it.
They also have 16 and a couple others I can’t recall.
1024 bytes make a Kb.
1024kb make 1MB.
1024MB make 1GB.
here’s a calculator:
http://home.online.no/~josandoe/js82.htm
and here’s more information:
Jinx corrects…
If you’re mulitplying bytes by megabytes…this base ten, people! Just like kilowatts and megawatts, etc. Think about what the prefix is telling you!
If your calculator can’t do scientific notation to carry all the zeros, just carry them in your head. Do the multiplication of the numbers tacking on the zeros at the end yourself. 6 meg x 6 meg = 36 meg. Of course, there’s no meg button, but just keep your wits about you.
Also, recall that meg and gig can be treated just like units. If it’s 6K x 6meg x 6gig, just convert (or express) “K” to a decimal of “megs”, mulitply in terms of “megs”, and then express “megs” as a decimal of “gigs”.
If you had $200,000…would you need a calculator to see that this is $0.2 million dollars?
It’s that simple…
Jinx corrects…himself! 
This is assuming 1K = 1000 bytes, not 1024, as most of us tend to take for granted.
Well, the prefixes (K, mega, giga) are ALL from the base-10 system 
- Jinx
I think I confused what you’re trying to do MSK. I also think that what I said only works for bits, not bytes. 8 bits to a byte, right?
But if you had 5480 bytes, then you’d just have to used xash’s calculator or divide by 1024 and you’d get 5.35 kb. If you wanted it in MB you’d divide again by 1024. I don’t think there is a scientific calculator function for that, at least not on any of the ones I had.
So what I thought you meant, if you do the start > programs > accessories > calculator. Then under view choose scientific and click the Oct option that changes your base. And now 4 * 4 = 20. umm no. I guess in this case I’d also multiply them in base 10 then divide by 8. You know I never had a chance to use this function on my calculators. I’ve only played with them. Like in Hex 5[sup]2[/sup] = 19, heeheehee. I guess I actually have used binary though, and so does maxtor in xash’s 2nd link. sigh
Jinx and Jinxie, is that confusing enough?
Well now wait. If you do the scientific like I said and you choose Hex, Oct or Bin they give you the option of the unit byte. So there must be something there. But I’m not up to the task at 1am.
Assuming we’re still talking about megabytes (MB) here, multiplying them like that would give a product with units of square bytes (B[sup]2[/sup]). I haven’t the faintest idea what a square byte is.
Correct so far, but there is a new family of prefixes, that are almost over us: Ki, Mi, Gi etc.
First some history:
A few decades ago the prefix k meant only 10[sup]3[/sup], but then someone realized that 2[sup]10[/sup]=1024 is reasonably close, and started calling 1024 bytes one kb. This didn’t cause any problems, as all people who used it thus were nerds who knew that the difference was small, but real. (after all the difference is only a few percents…)
Problems arose when these figures started being used by [sub]the evil[/sub] * salespeople*, who couldn’t even calculate square roots with a slide rule! For some time it was also normal to calculate the size of memory in 1024x1024 bytes chunks called Mb, but harddisk space in chunks of 10[sup]6[/sup] bytes (also called Mb)! (Just look at xashs link to maxtor above!)
The most outrageous result of this was when the successor to the hugely succesfull 720kb (ie 720x1024) byte disk was released. It had 1440kb, and someone imediatelly called it 1.44Mb, thus creating a horrible unit of 1024000 bytes/Mb. Ugly.
The solution:
A few years ago some of the wisest men in a subcommittee of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) realized that this is a mess. So they tossed up a few new prefixes to be used for the 1024-based units.
Now we’re all supposed to start refering to a collection of 2[sup]20[/sup] bytes as a Mebibyte or Mib (which is 1.048576Mb)
The difference might seem tiny today, but in a few years when we’ll routinely throw around exabytes the difference becomes bigger. (1Eib is 15% more than 1Eb!)
This standard has strong support from IEEE as well as from IEC, and I believe it will soon become official ISO (unless it has already happened, ISO-31 needs some work!)
Interesting link
Not that this really answers the OP, but I think it has been weeks since the topic was discussed 
Hey watch it, when I worked computer sales in the 80s, I used to keep a slide rule on my desk! And not just for show, I used it!
Anyway, what is the compsci world coming to when people can’t do binary, octal, and hex in their heads? I remember being taught binary math in 5th grade.
O tempora, O mores!
I still spend most of my day working in hex, although I must admit that octal is becoming a bit oldfashioned. Until last time I moved I used to have my grandfathers university slide rule in a drawer. I can’t find it any more, so I use a HP48SX instead. (only two steps down on the nerd scale - I wish I could find my HP12S)
Just wanted to say thanks for everyone’s input on this topic. I didn’t realize it could become so complex. I consider myself fairly intelligent with a number of subjects, but unfortunately, advanced mathematics is not one my strong points. ack!
I just checked my Babylon online dictionary to confirm this…
K is 1024.
k is 1000.
B is byte.
b is bit.
Hard drives work with bytes, KB’s, MB’s, and GB’s. Modems work with kb’s. As an example… I have a 56k modem. That’s 56kb/s, not 56KB/s. 56kb/s is really about 7KB/s.
Modems don’t work like that. the “b” specified in modems, as I understand it, is baud not bit or byte. AFAIK modems use requency modulation to send blocks of information at once encoded.
Yes there are calculators that can work directly with binary and hexadecimal as well as the usual decimal, what is more they can also be used to convert the result to any of these bases once the calculation is complete.
The one I have is a Texas Instruments TI68 but this is now fairly old.
Since it is programmable it will run run formulae by entering the variables and the formula itself and can then use the results in further formulae so that if you have a series of calculations to run it makes for a lot less work, it also does polar to cartesian conversions and complex quantities.
I should imagine there are better and shinier calculators out there.
erislover wrote:
The term baud is old and not really used any longer. Modems really are rated in bits-per-second these days.
1200 and 300 (and lower) baud modems only sent one bit per baud (symbol per second). They did indeed switch between two frequencies (audible tones) to do so. After a while, someone came up with the good idea of switching the phase of the tone, as well as the frequency, to add another bit to each symbol. 9600 bps modems only ran at 2400 baud, but sent 2 bits per symbol (2400x4=9600).
Current modems send a boatload of bits per symbol, with mutliple frequencies, amplitudes, and phases. I’ve been out of that part of computing long enough that I have no clue as to what baud rate they’re being sent at, but the overall throughput is supposed to be 56,000 bits per second (actually, isn’t it limited to 53kbps somehow?).
Actually, it’s base 1024. Sort of. And the “byte” part is completely irrelevant. If one wanted to have the number of megashoes or kilocantalopes, the math would be the same. Any programmable calculator should be able to handle this. After you program it to do so, of course.
Jinx:
No, 6 meg x 6 meg =36 (meg)^2. As Robot Arm said, this would involve a unit of byte squared. Also, you’d have to square the meg part.
erislover
56 baud per second? Isn’t that redundant? Sort of like 20 knots per second?
I wrote:
Gack. Typo. 9600 bps modems sent four bits at 2400 baud. Got the math right in the parentheses.