Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Looking for a really odd computer
Message-ID: <2723@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 4 Oct 90 14:09:51 GMT
References: <2721@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <11791@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 22

In article <11791@pucc.Princeton.EDU> EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes:

| 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.

  Thanks, someone who had actually programmed one mentioned this
machine.

  The root of the question was an algorithm which is vastly faster than
the one I have now, but requires an even number of bits in the size of
an int. Obviously some machines have been created which will not run
this code, so I can't use it. I probably wouldn't anyway, because
someday someone will ask me to port it to somthing... 

  I do appreciate all the people who posted and mailed answers to this.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
    VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.