Byte sizes (was Re: 2.8M 3.5' floppy

[Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner]

It was thus said that the Great woodelf once stated:
> 
> >>The fact that people today seem to believe that byte addressable is
> >>the only possible thing, along with a byte being 8 bits, is plain and
> >>simply because they haven't seen any other.
>
> Well in most cases a byte is a unsigned 1/2 half word. I still like view
> of the PDP-11 a byte is signed data. I think the lack of real byte access
> has forced the C standard to have unsigned bytes because the machines (
> 8080,Z80) can't handle real bytes .

  Which C Standard?  C89?  That mandates the following:

	a char type, minimum of 8 bits
	a short type, minimum of 16 bits
	a long type, minimum of 32 bits
	an int type, which is at least as large as a short, but not longer
		than a long.

	Also, unless otherwise noted, integral types (short, int, long) will
	default to signed, *except* for char, which can be signed or
	unsigned depending upon the implementation (for instance, most Unix
	C compilers in the early 90s defaulted to signed chars, while most
	MS-DOS C compilers defaulted to unsigned chars).  

  You can certainly have a signed char and an unsigned char, but just a
plain "char" would give you one of the other (implementation detail).  

  -spc (So, what's a "real byte" again?)