From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: pechter@gmail.com (William Pechter) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 20:33:52 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11, Unix, octal? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: And DEC used octal from the 1959 PDP1 through the VAX which was announced on October 1977. The PDP11 register front panel was painted to make front panel octal programming easier - breaking out the three bit patterns. Octal was deep in the DEC history and front panel flipping fingers. I'll never forget 014747 (single instruction memory decrement test (move the pc to address pc - 2... Bill Steve Johnson wrote: > The mainframes of the 60's and 70's all used 6-bit characters (and > often different encodings for the non alphanumeric characters). So the > Unix folks, including me, had experience with octal long before Dec. > > Steve > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > "Warren Toomey" > > > Something I've been meaning to ask for a while: why Unix and octal > on the > PDP-11? Because of the DEC documentation? > > -- Digital had it then. Don't you wish you could buy it now! pechter-at-gmail.com http://xkcd.com/705/