Happy DEC-20 Day!

On 20 Dec 2009 at 17:04, William Donzelli wrote: A google on "48 bit word" turns up the following:

Because the Burroughs B5500 and B6700 computers used a word containing 48 bits of data, but also extra bits that described the type of the data which played an important role in programming the machine, I would consider that series sufficiently out-of-the- ordinary to attempt to discuss here; the same applies to the English Electric KDF9 computer, which was stack-oriented like the Burroughs machine. The Telefunken TR440 computer also added two descriptor bits to each word with 48 bits of data, but these seem to only serve to protect the machine against accidentally interpreting instructions as data, or integers as floating-point quantities: its instructions were 24 bits long, with an 8-bit opcode and either a 16-bit address or two 8-bit indexed addresses, but I have not yet been able to derive the structure of an 8-bit address from the available references." http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/cp0303.htm

--Chuck