5 Dec
2016
5 Dec
'16
6:14 p.m.
On 12/05/2016 01:09 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
As Charles wrote, the PDP-10 commonly uses 7-bit bytes
for ASCII
text, but that's only part of the truth. The architecture is quite
byte size agnostic. There are instructions to operate on any byte
size from 1 to 36 bits, at any position inside a word. (Well, a
later extension to the architecture restricted this a bit.)
I've seen PDP-10 9-track tapes done two ways--one character per frame
and then 4 frames (36 bits) with 5 7-bit characters and the sign bit
left over.
--Chuck