Re: The integral type 'byte' (was Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?)

On 25.03.2025 19:50, bart wrote:

On 25/03/2025 18:18, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

>
If you'd have said 40 years ago, about the time when MS DOS systems
got popular,

 
1985? That's a bit late!

I was speaking about MS-DOS systems that got available where I live
around 1982. Few people could afford to buy the IBM systems. But they
marked the line where these system got popular here. A non-significant
but noticeable distribution of these systems could be observed around
1984/1985. That's about when "common folks" started to "talk IT".

8-bit processors started around the mid-70s, pretty much 50 years ago.

One of the first systems I used (around 1978) was a Commodore PET 2001.
There were (very few) other folks that used the first Apple computers
(also very expensive equipment here). There was another (I forgot the
name; it ran the CPM OS) which was affordable, and a bit later came
the Amiga and the Atari.

I would guess more people started using those during the late 70s,

The pervasion in society came much later! (It may have been different
where you live. But I'd be surprised if it would have been a completely
different situation.)

than were using those odd mainframes, since they
were so much more accessible.

This is important to emphasize; because mainframes were used by IT/CS
professionals, "normal users" had no access (or only as users of
commercial application software in companies who were not interested
in technical details, let alone information on "bit-level").

One thing I was describing is the two groups; professionals and, say,
"wannabes". While the first group had a complete view on the scenery
the latter group's (much more limited) view determined the perception.

You could literally buy a CPU from a corner electronics store.

In 1978 a Commodore Pet 2001 costs 2000 DM (I think it must have been
around 500 US$ back these days). Few people could afford to buy one.
And most people had no use for it anyway. Only nerds with sufficient
income could buy one to play with it.

 
(I believe the IBM 360 used 8-bit bytes from the 1960s.)

Using 8 bit for a "byte" was not uncommon; the bits are addressable by
a power-of-2. But systems were also not that streamlined. (I worked on
48 bit and 60 bit mainframe systems, for example.) Characters (that are
carried by "bytes") were 6 bit, ASCII (7 bit), EBCDIC, or some specific
8 bit character set. And even 5 bit character sets still supported. I
never worked with a 9/36 bit system, though. One DSP I programmed had
16 bit words (but that was not used for text processing).

Janis

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