Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!prls!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: accented alphabets and computers
Message-ID: <2418@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Sep-87 23:51:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.2418
Posted: Fri Sep 25 23:51:21 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Sep-87 23:02:32 EDT
References: <120@quick.COM> <1430@geac.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT.
Lines: 19
Xref: utgpu comp.std.internat:262 sci.lang:1391

In article <1430@geac.UUCP> daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown) writes:
>a 100% increase in disk space *has* been accepted by even
>penny-pinching commercial customers.... Don't forget, all of the old
>mainframes used 4-bit BCD at one time or another, and are now using
>6-bit, 7-bit ascii and 8-bit ebcdic.

Sorry, but 4-bit BCD uses 4 bits to store a digit, and 2 digits to store a
character: voila, 8 bit characters.

There *may* have been some machine, some time, which used 5 bit characters;
but I doubt it.  5 bits is not enough to store an upper-case only alphabet
and 10 digits.  (5 bit codes have been used in specialized data structures,
where the data is known to be mono-case alphabetic.)  But basically, 6 bits
is the minimum character size any computer has used; and 8 bit characters go
all the way back.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108