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From: ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: 3 Mar 2025 00:25:42 GMT
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In article <vq2j3r$v1q6$2@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 20:34:09 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
>
>> S/360 brought us the addressable 8 bit byte packaged into 16 bit
>> halfwords and 32 bit words, using the same addressing for each.
>
>Did any machine offer “byte” addressability with “byte” having
>any meaning 
>other than “8-bit quantity”?

As late as the last half of the 1980s, we ran some network operations
on a BB&N C-70 machine with 10 bit bytes.  It had a unix OS and
I was able to compile stock "vi" on it (since it did not ship with it).
As I recall the tape drive device nodes were something like /dev/mt0.8
and /dev/mt0.10 depending on what kind of bytes you wanted to write to tape...
-- 
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