Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN

According to Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan>:

In article <vq2j3r$v1q6$2@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 20:34:09 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
>

S/360 brought us the addressable 8 bit byte packaged into 16 bit
halfwords and 32 bit words, using the same addressing for each.

>
Did any machine offer “byte” addressability with “byte” having
any meaning
other than “8-bit quantity”?

>
As late as the last half of the 1980s, we ran some network operations
on a BB&N C-70 machine with 10 bit bytes. 

Good point, I'd forgotten about it.  It was a C-30 with two extra bits in
each byte to increase the address space from 16 to 20 bits.

I talked to one of the developers who told me with considerable frustration
how much C code implicitly assumed 8 bit bytes.  Well, duh.

--
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