How does a Data bus work?
					Data is represented as groups of 8 bits at a time. A collection of 8 bits is called a byte. A data bus is simply a channel or pipeline through which these bits can pass on their way from one location in the computer to another. The wider the bus, the more bits can be packed side by side and sent at the same time, much as cars travelling a highway can be driven side by side, as long as each car has its own lane to travel along. Most personal computer systems today have a data bus width of 32 bits; in other words they have the ability to send 32 bits at a time from one location to another. Imagine, for example, that we wish to send a lower-case letter 'a' to a printer. The character 'a', being data, has to have a representation within the machine so that the computer knows how to recognise it - using an agreed standard called ASCII, it has been decided that the letter that we know as a lower-case 'a' will be represented within the computer as a pattern of 8 bits: 01100101. Thus the lower-case letter 'a' is represented within the machine by the byte 01100101. Now imagine that we are on an overhead walkway looking down on an 8-lane highway. That a '1' is represented by a car, and that a '0' is represented by the absence of a car. As the byte 01100101 passes beneath us, we would see the following traffic pattern:
					For a bus width of 32 bits, we would simply have a highway four times wider.