> > What I wonder is why people didn't just store the date as decimal in those
> > two bytes. You can go up to the year 65535 that way. I'm positive there
> Maybe because the software was written on a machine (or for an OS that
> simulated a machine) using punched cards or something. You can't
> necessarily represent 256 different values using standard punches in a
> column of a card. Some combinations are illegal.
Nop - or better partly correct - it is true that not every punch
combination was legel (that would be 4096 possible) but at least
there was a legal combination for any possible 8-Bit combination.
Otherways I would have been impossible to boot from a punch card
reader !
> Anyway, a 'byte', or more particularly a character, is not necessarily 8
> bits. It may be _now_, but it wasn't then.
I love your comments (and I guess you had also some contact with
these 9 Bit Byte Bull Mini computers :)
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Mon Jan 11 1999 - 14:59:19 GMT