From: norman@nose.cs.utoronto.ca (Norman Wilson)
Subject: [TUHS] 6-bit, 7-bit and 9-bit byte UNIXes
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:47:22 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20041001005644.2B3F7373@minnie.tuhs.org> (raw)
The very first UNIX ran on the PDP-7, which had 18-bit words.
I happen to have the assembly-language source code to parts
of that system. Many programs contain error-handling code
that does something like this:
lac d1
sys write; 1f; 1
jmp somewhere
1: 077012
...
d1: 1
Evidently the system thought in words in those days
(the second argument to sys write is presumably a word
count), but the single word written is a strong clue
that 9-bit bytes were used, and that a certain concise
error message that people love to complain about was
there from the beginning (and why not?).
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
next reply other threads:[~2004-10-01 0:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-10-01 0:47 Norman Wilson [this message]
2004-10-01 1:05 ` Andru Luvisi
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2004-10-01 3:59 Carl Lowenstein
2004-09-30 23:46 James Petts
2004-09-30 19:07 Natalia Portillo
2004-09-30 23:57 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2004-10-01 0:21 ` Kenneth Stailey
2004-10-01 0:58 ` Michael Davidson
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