off topic - capatob - saratov2 computer Russsian pdp8? HELP

[Grant Taylor]

On 1/6/19 11:25 AM, Guy Sotomayor Jr via cctalk wrote:
> I think it’s also telling that the IETF uses the term octet in all of 
> the specifications to refer to 8-bit sized data.  As “byte” (from 
> older machines) could be anything and is thus somewhat ambiguous.
> 
> It *may* have been the IBM 360 that started the trend of Byte == 8-bits 
> as the 360’s memory (in IBM’s terms) was byte addressable and the 
> instructions for accessing them were “byte” instructions (as opposed 
> to half-word and word instructions).

Thank you for the clarification.

My take away is that before some nebulous point in time (circa IBM's 
360) a "byte" could be a number of different bits, depending on the 
computer being discussed.  Conversely, after said nebulous point in time 
a byte was standardized on 8-bits.

Is that fair and accurate enough?  -  I'm wanting to validate the patch 
before I apply it to my mental model of things.  ;-)



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die