Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!princeton!pucc!EGNILGES
From: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Looking for a really odd computer
Message-ID: <11791@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 4 Oct 90 01:19:54 GMT
References: <2721@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Reply-To: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 16
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <2721@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>, davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes:

>
>  There has been discussion of computer word size, does the number of
>bits have to be a power of two for new systems, etc. I was looking at a
>discussion in another group and saw a really nice way to solve the
>problem, but rejected it because it wasn't portable to any system. The
>question is, has anyone ever made a general purpose computer with and
>odd word size? No one doesn't count, thank you bit slicers.

On page 27 of Andrew S. Tanenbaum's book STRUCTURED COMPUTER ORGANIZA-
TION (Prentice-Hall 1976), there is a list of computers that have
been sold commercially and their word size.  All are even numbers
save for one.  This is the "Electrologica X8", with "27 bits per cell."
I have never heard anything else about this machine, which sounds
like a vacuum cleaner.