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

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Rich Alderson <RichA at livingcomputers.org> writes:
> The 5 characters per word is irrelevant to a discussion of tape, whether
> 9- or 7-track:  That's how ASCII text was represented in memory, on disk,
> on DECtape, or on any other word-oriented medium.  Representing the bits
> in an ASCII character by the character itself (to make divisions on the
> tape more clear), this appears diagrammatically as follows:
>
> Text: HELLOworld
>
> Memory:
> HHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOO_wwwwwwwooooooorrrrrrrlllllllddddddd_
>
> Core Dump:      High Density:   SIXBIT: (7 track)
> HHHHHHHE        HHHHHHHE        HHHHHH
> EEEEEELL        EEEEEELL        HEEEEE
> LLLLLLLL        LLLLLLLL        EELLLL
> LLLLOOOO        LLLLOOOO        LLLLLL
> ....OOO_        OOO_wwww        LLLLOO
> wwwwwwwo        wwwooooo        OOOOO_
> oooooorr        oorrrrrr        wwwwww
> rrrrrlll        rlllllll        wooooo
> lllldddd        ddddddd_        oorrrr
> ....ddd_                        rrrlll
>                                 lllldd
>                                 ddddd_

Let's add ANSI-ASCII:

.HHHHHHH
.EEEEEEE
.LLLLLLL
.LLLLLLL
_OOOOOOO
.wwwwwww
.ooooooo
.rrrrrrr
.lllllll
_ddddddd

The nice property with this format is that ASCII text in 36-bit words
comes out as ASCII text in octets, while also preserving binary 36-bit
data.