Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Fri, 28 Feb 2025 17:36:29 +0000, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

In alt.folklore.computers Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:

antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) writes:

In alt.folklore.computers Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com>
wrote:

c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> writes:
 

Hey ... even a "word" was kinda undefined for awhile. Remember octal
? 12-bit "words" ?  :-)

 
You're just being silly.
 
The word size in the PDP-5/PDP-8 is 12 bits.  There's no need for
scare quotes around the word "word".  The addressable memory unit in
that architecture is the word, so 4096KW is 49,152 bits, with
addresses 0 to 4095 (most often expressed in octal as 0 to 7777).

>
What "KW" means above?

 
Kilowords.
$ printf "%f\n" $(( 49152.0 / 4096.0 )) 12.000000

 
But the 49152 bits is 4096 _words_, so KW is clearly not kilowords.

Indeed. It is Kelvin Wods. kilowords would be kW.



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