The real gotya on the old machines... UPPER CASE ASCII
ONLY.
Actually, the switch to the eight bit byte (I am of the camp that a byte
is 8 bits by default, then adjust to suit) was dictated not by characters,
but by numbers - the vast majority of data in the 1960s was BCD. Six bit
is not very efficient for handling BCD.
William Donzelli
aw288 at
osfn.org