Path: ...!local-1.nntp.ord.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-4.nntp.ord.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024 05:18:11 +0000 Subject: Re: The joy of octal Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc References: <20241111090306.0000385d@gmail.com> <70ac3933f2b6e0f3539c739acc5a792d@msgid.frell.theremailer.net> <875xonp30u.fsf@comcast.net.invalid> From: "186282@ud0s4.net" <186283@ud0s4.net> Organization: wokiesux Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:17:49 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.13.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <875xonp30u.fsf@comcast.net.invalid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <9ECdnWbjcowO4aT6nZ2dnZfqnPWdnZ2d@earthlink.com> Lines: 47 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 99.101.150.97 X-Trace: sv3-9QcqaksDtnI7t1CqJNe1iR/QGNRDJjcFEEVQTgYwfFje4X4gzJ0TsUjeth/9Q3y3MCpOOVqc9M9FWDT!t9iTNoLlkBLI61nWdTKbUy1nR5feRIPHdlMDCZGXXpr/BuUYQCPihpkcOBX+4EDRNj/woELxZ/m1!sE581XkN3utRknks4Fo+ X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3395 On 11/16/24 11:16 AM, Don_from_AZ wrote: > "186282@ud0s4.net" <186283@ud0s4.net> writes: > >> On 11/16/24 12:24 AM, rbowman wrote: >>> On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:31:26 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote: >>> >>>> Again, not entirely sure where the end of octal was. Many of the PDPs >>>> used octal, and I *think* a few PIC chips. 8/16/32 kinda took over >>>> kinda early on however. >>> chmod 4755 >>> I don't know if I'd call it octal but if you were writing an >>> assembler for >>> quite a few microcontrollers the opcodes would have a pattern where source >>> ans destination registers were 0 - 7, >> >> >> Octal does persist, sometimes in obscure ways and places. >> It WAS kinda big for awhile - a "big step" better than >> 8-bit. >> >> Alas don't think anymore 12 or 24 bit CPUs are >> gonna be made. Might still have a place for some >> higher-end microcontrollers - hell, I think Epson >> still makes FOUR-bit microcontrollers (looked at >> the sheet for one once, insanely capable). >> >> Hmmm ... 256 of those 4-bitters running >> parallel - that'd be a fun project :-) >> > > GE's "GECOS" and later Honeywell's "GCOS" mainframe machines were all > 36-bit words, so octal was a natural for them: 6 6-bit BCD characters or > 4 9-bit bytes per 36 bit word. Yep ... 2^12 hung on for quite awhile. And, in Linux/Unix, is STILL there in things like 'chmod'. 8/16/32/64 seems more 'natural' ... but that may be more because of constant exposure than because of practical function. You can make a CPU with any word length you want. Remember "bit-slice" CPUs ? Fabrication tech could not make really wide single chips, so you just wired a bunch of them parallel ... you could HAVE yer 64-bit+ CPU even in the late 70s.