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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 01:38:44 -0000 (UTC)
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On 3 Mar 2025 00:25:42 GMT, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

> In article <vq2j3r$v1q6$2@dont-email.me>,
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> 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).

Interesting. I suppose in C, the “unsigned char” type could hold values up 
to 1023. Code that assumed 8-bit bytes would work fine for the most part, 
until it started to assume things about overflow behaviour ...