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From: mitchalsup@aol.com (MitchAlsup1)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Byte Addressability And Beyond
Date: Wed, 1 May 2024 16:43:09 +0000
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Thomas Koenig wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> schrieb:

>> (Interesting that the microprocessor world made byte addressing--and ASCII 
>> character encoding--universal right from the beginning. Starting from a 
>> clean slate, I guess.)

> A major market for microprocessors were pocket calculators,
> cash registers and the like, which is why having 8 bits and BCD
> arithmetic was an advantage - see the DAA instruction of the 8080
> or the decimal flag on the 6502.

From 1978-1980 I worked at NCR corporation on cash registers.
We made a BASIC interpreter as the programmable backbone of 
the cash register lineup. Not a single decimal arithmetic 
instruction was used in the cash register application. The
BASIC interpreter was written by a 5-man team in 8085 assembler.

That model was sold from 1979 through 1998. So the lack of
decimal arithmetic was not a significant disadvantage.

> The basis of the 8008, the first serious microprocessor,
> was the Datapoint 2200.  A nice history can be found at
> http://www.righto.com/2023/08/datapoint-to-8086.html .
> And as the Datapoint 2200 was originally a "smart terminal",
> it had to be able to connect to mainframes, which meant that
> 8-bit bytes were a natural choice.  (And I still think that
> having BCD influenced the decision to go to the 8-bit byte
> on the /360).

> So, anything but a clean slate.