Re: byte me, The joy of FORTRAN

On 2/26/25 11:47 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 27 Feb 2025 01:44:31 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
 

I am reasonably sure that the 635 only had hardware support
for 6 and 9 bit bytes and I don't think the 645 or 6000 changed that.

 Looking at one of the GE-645 system manuals at Bitsavers, the term used is
“character size”, and the options mentioned are indeed only 6 or 9 bits.

   Look ... they only had just SO much tech back
   in the day, and were very creative about how
   to use it. Most of the old systems WERE very
   good - either 'generally' or 'in their own way'.
   They had VERY good nerds back then.
   But, after awhile, 8-bit bytes became THE standard.
   It was kinda easy, reasonable, easy to put into
   the hardware. Micro-computer CPUs were initially
   kinda limited too - again making 8-bits easier
   than 9 or 12 or 18.
   SO ... now it's all multiples of 8.
   The main lesson of Computing Past however is
   not the byte size, but the immense creativity
   involved building great SYSTEMS from the very
   limited hardware.
   LONG back I was in a govt data-center. They
   had some kind of, I'm pretty sure, early DEC.
   The "CPU" was a kinda cubic-meter plastic
   box of DISCRETE TRANSISTORS. All the usual
   tape drives and paper/card readers and
   TTY terminals in the very cold room. The
   top guys had actual serial terminals in
   their offices !
   We're talking early 60s tech here - but it was
   STILL good enough to run an entire org, handle
   many users local and remote.
   It was all cool enough to kinda shape my
   career path.