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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdcsu!herbie
From: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS])
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Re: IBM and those upper 8 bits
Message-ID: <1124@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-Mar-85 22:17:42 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1124
Posted: Sun Mar 17 22:17:42 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Mar-85 07:04:22 EST
References: <511@ima.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS])
Organization: U of Waterloo
Lines: 24
Summary: 

In article <511@ima.UUCP> johnl@ima.UUCP writes:
<long article preceeding>

>Under those 
>conditions, it's no surprise that the high-order byte of practically every 
>address in every data structure in the entire system was stuffed full of bits, 
>and that IBM now has a major mess on their hands going to 32 bit addressing.  
>
>John Levine, ima!johnl 

don't you mean 31-bit addressing?  the high order bit (sign bit for integers)
is still used for a flag when passing parameters.  they couldn't get away
from that because it is uses so pervasively by everything ever written for
IBM systems.  i have the XA announcement letter somewhere, but i know 
it's 31 bits.

Herb Chong...

I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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