6 Oct
2007
6 Oct
'07
6:43 p.m.
SEVEN bit world.
Explain? Parity does not count.
We can blame IBM for all our 8 bit PC ASCII stuff.
Eight bits I think for EBDC was earlier. Having 4 bit sized TTL stuff
does not make for nice octal digits. Ben.
The big reason IBM picked eight over six with the S/360 (and yes,
there was a fight over this), was that in the big scheme of things,
eight and four bit chunks are more memory efficient than six bit
chunks.
Kind of really bad timing on DEC's part, setting up the whole 36 bit
line just as IBM set up everything to 32. But then, they would not
have known. Bad luck.
--
Will