From: rminnich@gmail.com (ron minnich)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11, Unix, octal?
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2017 15:28:03 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAP6exYLDH5q1eO4Wr1jtvoH7BFBAf2_cUUSpjY3H0KMMzeV_oA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <587e2641.3OkLy5V7l13RTp6G%schily@schily.net>
On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 6:12 AM Joerg Schilling <schily at schily.net> wrote:
>
>
> Note that the people wo did this, used the 18 bit machines before.
>
>
>
As steve johnson pointed out, just about everything around then was octal.
I think IBM brought widespread use of hex with the 360 ca. 1964, but to
most other vendors octal was a way of thinking as your interesting quote
points out.
As for character formats, on e.g. the pdp-10 you had lots of choice,
including 6 6-bit chars or 7 5-bit chars with one bit left over as common
... I also recall people used to complain about the inefficiencies inherent
in 8-bit character formats ...
I for one was still pretty glad to see octal mostly go away.
ron
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-01-17 15:28 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-01-16 19:10 [TUHS] Article on 'not meant to understand this' Steve Johnson
2017-01-16 20:15 ` [TUHS] PDP-11, Unix, octal? Warren Toomey
2017-01-16 20:25 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2017-01-16 22:31 ` ron minnich
2017-01-16 20:31 ` Erik E. Fair
2017-01-17 1:09 ` Steve Johnson
2017-01-17 1:33 ` William Pechter
2017-01-17 14:28 ` Joerg Schilling
2017-01-17 15:14 ` Nelson H. F. Beebe
2017-01-17 16:53 ` William Cheswick
2017-01-17 14:12 ` Joerg Schilling
2017-01-17 15:28 ` ron minnich [this message]
2017-01-16 20:45 Noel Chiappa
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