What I remember about Macro (the infamously-named assembler language for DEC
machines) is that on the DEC-10 there are hardware instructions for viewing the
36-bit word in bytes of any length you choose: 36 1-bit bytes, 18 2-bit bytes,
five 7-bit bytes (back then it used 7-bit ASCII so five chars per word was
pretty normal - thus "XYZZY" and "PLUGH", I suppose) and so on.
(Naming an assembler language "Macro" probably seemed as clever a marketing
choice as naming a z/OS security product "Top Secret", but the same difficulty
applies to both: When you want to look up something about either on the
internet, you can't get what you want.)
---
Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313
/* ....my co-worker Terry Jackson, who is the Miami Herald's automotive writer
and TV critic. That's correct: This man gets paid to drive new cars AND watch
television. If he ever dies and goes to heaven, it's going to be a big letdown.
-Dave Barry, 2001 */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2023 13:28
I experimented with assembler ("Macro") on decsystem-10. Even if less
feature-laden than HLASM, it struck me as more unified in design. For example,
one could code instructions in literals (why not?) which would have been great
for EX, before LOCTR.
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