bit-widths, was Re: HP Laserjet ..again....

[Tom Jennings]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 14:07, Paul Koning wrote:
> >>>>> "William" == William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org> writes:
> 
>  >> Not in this community!  Newfangled usage, yes.
>  William> Well, if newfangled means after 7 April 1964.
> 
> Is that when IBM did the 360?
> 
> But at that time they were merely one of the users of the term "byte",
> and arguably the odd man out by applying it to 8 bits rather than the
> more common 6.

I've seen references to 'byte' meaning lots of numbers 6 - 9, but was it
ever really weighted towards 6? Most references I've seen to the
6-bit-unit was simply, 'character'. But I spent no time around IBM
(except one brief stint on TSO onna 360 writing 8x300 code).

> Or perhaps not yet.  There are still machines in production use where
> byte does not mean 8 bits.  Cyber mainframes, for example.

What's a cyber byte size?