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From: res@ihlpe.ATT.COM (Rich Strebendt @ AT&T Information Systems - Indian Hill West; formerly)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.arch
Subject: Re: *Why* do modern machines mostly have 8-bit bytes?
Message-ID: <1897@ihlpe.ATT.COM>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 23:33:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihlpe.1897
Posted: Tue Jul 28 23:33:32 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Jul-87 02:06:38 EDT
References: <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <8315@utzoo.UUCP> <1037@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 33
Summary: Someone else remembers the LGP-30 !!!
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:3471 comp.arch:1722

In article <1037@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>, radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes:
  
> Yup. The LGP-30, of 1950's vintage, had 31 bit memory words. The accumulator
> had 32 bits, though. They seem to have thought of their memory as being
> 32-bit words, but the low-order bit was always zero...

GADS!!!  It has been a long time since I worked on that funny little
beast -- the predecessor of the microcomputer!

Memories come flooding to the surface:

	The highlevel language for the machine - the "24.2 Floating
	Point Interpretive System" (just a tad higher than machine
	code).

	A blackjack program that cheated running on a machine so slow
	that the machine got caught at it!

	Operation cycle times measured in milliseconds instead of
	nanoseconds.

	A front-panel CRT display that REALLY was a CRT display.  To
	read the number displayed, you interpretted the pulse train
	waveform on the display.

	The one-an-only I/O device was a Frieden Flexowriter with a
	paper tape reader/punch.  Noisy, but quite reliable.

A primitive machine by today's standards, but a lot of fun to work
with.

					Rich Strebendt
					iwsl6!res