TECHNIQUE
Digital covers a very down-to-earth reality: instead of being operated by a voltage regulator, a digitized locomotive is operated by an on-board chip which communicates with a central unit and its controller. The principle was explained in Issue 113 of Voie Libre 113. To communicate, all these appliances use a common language: the binary code. Understanding this code means it can be used to optimize the performance of the engines.
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Binary code is common to all microprocessors. It is based on basic units, the bits, gathered in packets of 8 which form bytes. The bits are numbered from 0 to 7 starting from the right. Each bit,
