character codes and punched cards (was Re: y2k stuff)

From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke_at_mch20.sbs.de>
Date: Tue Jan 12 10:17:53 1999

> > 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 !

> Still wrong.
> Not all machines that had card readers could boot from cards, and even
> the ones that could do so didn't necessarily have a 256-character set
> (or 8-bit bytes).

> For instance, the IBM 1401, which typically was booted from cards, but
> had only 64 distinct characters.

Shure ? the 1401 is a bit before my time, but didn't they
already use 12 row cards with EBCDIC coding (like 12,1 to
12,9; 11,1 to 11,9 and 0,2 to 0,9 for A-i; J-R and S-Z) ?

Gruss
H


--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 10:17:53 GMT

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