y2k stuff

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Wed Jan 13 00:49:54 1999

John G. Zabolitzky wrote:
> 6 bit characters were quite the standard BEFORE /360 days, say for
> CDC 6600, CDC 7600 (the most powerful computers from mid-60s until
> the appearance of the CRAY-1 machines, forerunners of the Cyber 170 series),
> or IBM 7030, IBM 7090, IBM 7094 say, back in the '60s.
> They were not called bytes, and could not be addressed directly;
> there were 36 bit or 60 bit words, and shift / logical instructions used for
> character manipulation. In fact this is probably the origin for the
> six character namelength limit in FORTRAN IV : 6 chars x 6 bits = 36 bit word.

All generally correct except for the 7030 (Stretch). Stretch used
variable-length fields from 1 to 64 bits, and its native character set used 8
bits. The integer arithmetic instructions, however, were specificially
designed to be useful on character data types from 4 to 8 bits.

http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/stretch/
Received on Wed Jan 13 1999 - 00:49:54 GMT

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