When S/360 was designed, ASCII was not finalized, and was not used for anything. EBCDIC was designed to be easy to convert with existing peripherals such as card readers and printers..
On Fri, Jun 19, 2026 at 12:28 PM Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:05:30 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote: > > ... > >The ASCII bit in the PSW is the to modify the behavior of decimal > >instructions; it has no relevance to telecommunications access methods, > >which support a variety of character sets. > > > Did that affect anything other than the representation > of the sign nybble? After UNPK wasn't OC x'F0' or > OC x'30' still necessary? Did any software inspect > that PSW bit to choose which? > > Why was that ASCII mode valuable? was there a > library of signed decimal (tape?) data needing > compatibility support? TCU hardware? > > -- > gil > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
