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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: byte me, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 01:44:31 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Taughannock Networks
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Originator: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine)

According to Peter Flass  <peter_flass@yahoo.com>:
>> These days we think that all bytes are 8 bits but in that era 6 or 7 or 9 were
>> all common. I don't ever recall writing code on a PDP-10 that used 8 bit bytes
>> other than maybe unpacking magtapes from IBM systems.
>
>Multics used 8-bit bytes on a 36-bit Honeywell 6000. The developers tried
>to discourage the use of 9-bit bytes - I was told that “nothing” used them,
>but I found out WordPerfect used them for metacharacters.

That's odd. I am reasonably sure that the 635 only had hardware
support for 6 and 9 bit bytes and I don't think the 645 or 6000
changed that. I suppose it could have been a software convention,
don't put anything in the high bit of a 9 bit byte or you'll be sorry.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly