Byte sizes (was Re: 2.8M 3.5' floppy

[woodelf]

William Donzelli wrote:

>>Well the 1620 was a variable length machine ... A sign/flag bit made 
>>more sence at the time since
>>you only had as many BCD digits as you needed.
>>    
>>
>
>It is still very inefficient, with lots of wasted bits. It would not
>matter with a small machine like a 1620, but it does when the system gets
>larger. Even a small S/360 dwarfs a 1620. All those wasted bits add up.
>  
>
The 1620 is BCD serial ... slow but then lots less $$$ than a 360.
Since I only got to know small computers like a PDP 8 and a IBM1130
I never had to deal with the bigger stuff.

>Going back a few days to a previous thread about books, I suggest you read
>pages 148 and 149 of *IBMs System 360 and Early 370 Computers*. You may
>then see that there was no conspiracy against sixbit.
>
>  
>
I never said a word about 6 bits ... I grumble about  11111111 base 0 bits.
There is a lot of good reasions why we have 8 bits mostly because 4 bits 
work
nice for MSI like alu's and shift registers.

>William Donzelli
>aw288 at osfn.org
>  
>