On Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 09:57:08AM -0600, Nicholas Leippe wrote: > On Thu Apr 9 2009 09:47:44 Matthew Walker wrote: > > On Thu, April 9, 2009 9:44 am, Nicholas Leippe wrote: > > > On Thu Apr 9 2009 09:28:24 Charles Curley wrote: > > >> 8 bits = one byte > > > > > > On most machines ;) > > > > Now you've piqued my interest. I'm going to go dig around, and try to > > figure out where that statement isn't true. Thanks for ruining my > > productivity for a couple hours. :) > > http://www.new-brunswick.net/workshop/c++/faq/intrinsic-types.html > > PDP-10 had 36-bit bytes. > They mention a machine w/64-bit bytes. > > I'm sure there are other cases.
One you likely won't find: at JPL I worked on a home brewed data collection computer. The original home brew CPU had an 18 bit wide Ampex core. We were adding a small herd of 6502s to supplement and eventually replace the home brew CPU. The machine used a 6 bit subset of ASCII, called "half-ASCII", on its displays. So you could stuff three characters into a word in the Ampex core. The terms "byte" and "word" were rather fluid, depending in part on where in memory you were writing. So, yes, I knew perfectly well that some pedant would pick that nit. The only question was, which one(s)? Nicholas, please step forward and accept the Pedant of the Day Award. Hmmm, should we rename this outfit the Pedantic Linux Users Group? -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
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