Final answer:
In an 8-bit system using 2's complement arithmetic, the greatest negative number that can be stored is -128.
Therefore, the correct answer is: option C). -128
Step-by-step explanation:
In two's complement arithmetic, the addition of more than two numbers will be correct independently of the order in which they are added even if overflow occurs in a partial summation as long as the overall sum is within the available range to represent the numbers.
The greatest negative number which can be stored in an 8-bit wordlength computer using 2's complement arithmetic is -128.
An 8-bit system can represent numbers from -128 to +127. In 2's complement, the highest bit (the leftmost bit) is a sign bit, where 0 represents positive numbers and 1 represents negative numbers.
In a full 8-bit range (00000000 to 11111111 in binary), the number 10000000 represents the negative number -128, thus making it the greatest negative number that can be stored using 8-bit 2's complement arithmetic.