Odd "endianness" [was Re: RE: Base 64 posts to the list]

[Chuck Guzis]

On 12/05/2016 01:09 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:

> As Charles wrote, the PDP-10 commonly uses 7-bit bytes for ASCII
> text, but that's only part of the truth.  The architecture is quite
> byte size agnostic.  There are instructions to operate on any byte
> size from 1 to 36 bits, at any position inside a word.  (Well, a
> later extension to the architecture restricted this a bit.)

I've seen PDP-10 9-track tapes done two ways--one character per frame
and then 4 frames (36 bits) with 5 7-bit characters and the sign bit
left over.

--Chuck