Indeed, there's a bit in the PSW indicating whether it is running in ASCII or EBCDIC, isn't there? :-)
On Saturday, 20 February 2016 02:02:46 UTC, Tom Marchant wrote: > On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 22:08:44 +0000, Gibney, David Allen,Jr wrote: > > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] > ?> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin > >> Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 2:02 PM > >> > >> EBCDIC is a pain. It should have been ASCII. Or IBM should finish > >> implementation of Enhanced ASCII support. > > > >Can you really imagine the level of acceptance (NOT) that would have > >received 2.5 decades ago :) > > MVS OpenEdition, as it was called in MVS/SP 4.3, wasn't especially well > received > when it was announced almost 2.5 decades ago. Would it have been better > received > if it had been ASCII? > > ASCII was seriously considered for the initial System/360 design. Amdahl, > Blaauw and > Brooks published an article in the IBM Journal in April, 1964, titled > "Architecture of the > System/360" in which many of the design trade-offs were described. One place > where > the article can be found is > http://web.ece.ucdavis.edu/~vojin/CLASSES/EEC272/S2005/Papers/IBM360-Amdahl_april64.pdf > . > > <quote> > ASCII vs BCD codes. The selection of the 8-bit character size in 1961 proved > wise by > 1963, when the American Standards Association adopted a 7-bit standard > character > code for information interchange (ASCII). This 7-bit code is now under > final > consideration by the International Standards Organization for adoption as an > international > standards recommendation. The question became “Why not adopt ASCII as the > only > internal code for System/360?’ > > The reasons against such exclusive adoption was the widespread use of the BCD > code > derived from and easily translated to the IBM card code. To facilitate use of > both codes, > the central processing units are designed with a high degree of code > independence, with > generalized code translation facilities, and with program-selectable BCD or > ASCII modes for > code-dependent instructions. Nevertheless, a choice had to be made for the > code-sensitive > I/O devices and for programming support, and the solution was to offer both > codes, as a > user option. Systems with either option will, of course, easily read or write > I/O media with the > other code. > </quote> > > -- > Tom Marchant > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
