Subject:
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Re: Mechanical Memory for Computing
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 30 Jun 2003 21:56:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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697 times
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Bruce Boyes wrote:
> Quoting Ross Crawford <rcrawford@csi.com>:
> > Actually a byte is whatever you define it to be - a nibble is
> > generally half a byte, and a word is generally 2 bytes.
>
> Not to start a tempest in a teapot but I know of no recent computer
> language or hardware which defines a byte as anything other than 8
> bits.
Depends on what you call 'recent' :-)
The DEC PDP-8 had 12-bit words with 6-bit bytes, if I recall correctly.
There were also computers with 36-bit words containing six 6-bit bytes in
one word (DEC 10/20?), or three 12-bit bytes.
The DataSaab D21 (that's a computer from the 1950-60 something) had 24-bit
words split into eight 3-bit bytes/nybbles/digits.
In the name of internationalization, a character is now 16 bits wide, so the
'byte' may still grow...
--
Anders Isaksson, Sweden
BlockCAD: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/proglego.htm
Gallery: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/gallery/index.htm
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Mechanical Memory for Computing
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| (...) I just had to join in on this one :) I greatly enjoyed playing around with Intel's early 4004 PMOS microprocessor, one of the very first I think. It was a 4 bit per entity (character?) device which was primarily aimed at processing BCD, one (...) (21 years ago, 1-Jul-03, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Mechanical Memory for Computing
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| Quoting Ross Crawford <rcrawford@csi.com>: (...) Not to start a tempest in a teapot but I know of no recent computer language or hardware which defines a byte as anything other than 8 bits. "byte-wide" I/O is always 8 bits wide as are byte-wide (...) (21 years ago, 26-Jun-03, to lugnet.robotics)
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