13 Oct
2006
13 Oct
'06
3:42 p.m.
woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> Wrote:
Simon Fryer wrote:
Yes, 24 bit machines did exist. In fact before BSD, there was project Genie
which made an SDS 930 into an SDS 940 (added paging hardware) and made up a
timesharing system. It was the basis of the Tymshare corporation which was
formed in the 60's. The machine had (IIRC) 64k of 24 bit words, paged in
chunks of 4k words. The technique used what they called "relabeling registers"
on the upper 8 bits of the memory address. The software had all sorts of
things, including 'forks'. All before Unix (1969). Quite a system for its
day. It was the competition to the GE 235 (Later 635) machines that started at
Dartmouth. In the early 70's they had a whole bunch of machines in Cupertino
under one roof.
As for strings: They packed 3 to a word (usually).
Trivia: 'BRS 131B' was the system call to crash the system.
Just so you know.
--
Tom Watson
tsw at johana.com
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Heya,
What ever happened to 24 bit words, or is this an easy case?
That is 3 8 bit
char's. :)
I was thinking of Dec's machines and rememberd other brands later.
While 24 bit computers were made, I can't think of any off hand.
> Simon