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From: robert@gitpyr.gatech.EDU (Robert Viduya)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: CYBER word length
Message-ID: <2622@gitpyr.gatech.EDU>
Date: Wed, 12-Nov-86 10:05:06 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.2622
Posted: Wed Nov 12 10:05:06 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Nov-86 04:01:48 EST
References: <7208@elsie.UUCP> <5142@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2447@hcr.UUCP> <612@astroatc.UUCP> <4169@amdahl.UUCP>
Reply-To: robert@gitpyr.UUCP (Robert Viduya)
Organization: Office of Computing Services, Georgia Tech
Lines: 20

>kim@amdahl.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) (kim@amdahl.UUCP, <4169@amdahl.UUCP>):
> In article <612@astroatc.UUCP>, philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason) writes:
> >                       CDC thought that nobody would ever use more than 64
> > different symbols for I/O so they made their "byte" six bits long.
> And then they discovered that people would use more than 64 symbols, and
> had to come up with an escape kluge to get additional symbols.  So now
> CDC Display Codes can be either 6-bits or 12-bits in length.

This actually happened years ago.  Recently, they've decided to adopt the
ultimate kludge.  They've dropped all the 60-bit word and 6-bit character
nonsense and now are using 64-bit words and 8-bit bytes (not to mention
using the ASCII character set in their operating system :-).  Oh yeah,
their new architecture is also a twos-complement one.

				robert
-- 
Robert Viduya					     robert@pyr.ocs.gatech.edu
Office of Computing Services					(404) 894-4660
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia	30332