Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Peter Flass Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: byte me, The joy of FORTRAN Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:42:54 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 20 Message-ID: <1836660367.762463015.525023.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> References: <1418991943.762291516.721625.peter_flass-yahoo.com@news.eternal-september.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:42:54 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="5209b3a62f76f28f26bf3503f2e6da36"; logging-data="4011105"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18xFQOO7WDdmeN2wh0MUuV1" User-Agent: NewsTap/5.3.1 (iPad) Cancel-Lock: sha1:iDSQCUOQ11N4Ewet5FaLVFBt1Zg= sha1:NxRw77p9U2o1Z8ky1N9tWFL5/ks= Bytes: 2083 John Levine wrote: > According to Peter Flass : >>> 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. > I think so. -- Pete