On Feb 10, 2020, at 3:01 PM, Mike Schwab <mike.a.sch...@gmail.com> wrote: > > ASCII wasn't finalized when the S/360 was announced. And it needed to > use existing 7 bit peripherals, tapes, etc. >
But System/360 was supposed to be an ASCII machine, or at least to transition to ASCII long term. There was a bit in the PSW to determine if ASCII was in use or not. The IBM engineers, programmers, lower-level managers, and *customers* didn’t understand the importance of it, though, so it never happened. In System/360 the ASCII bit was repurposed to switch between EC mode (needed for DAT) and BC mode. Today those of us who use z/OS, etc. are paying the price for that lack of vision. -- Pew, Curtis G curtis....@austin.utexas.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
