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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 03:01:00 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Taughannock Networks
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Cleverness: some
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Originator: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine)

According to Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan>:
>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.  

Good point, I'd forgotten about it.  It was a C-30 with two extra bits in
each byte to increase the address space from 16 to 20 bits.

I talked to one of the developers who told me with considerable frustration
how much C code implicitly assumed 8 bit bytes.  Well, duh.

-- 
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