From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jun 4 15:56:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA25599 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:56:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eeyore.lv-hrc.nevada.edu (eeyore.lv-hrc.nevada.edu [131.216.27.16]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA25585 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:56:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scooby.lv-hrc.nevada.edu (scooby.lv-hrc.nevada.edu [131.216.27.8]) by eeyore.lv-hrc.nevada.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA00264; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 16:08:05 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199706042308.QAA00264@eeyore.lv-hrc.nevada.edu> From: "Harry Reed" To: "Terry Lambert" , "Tim Oneil" Cc: Subject: Re: signed/unsigned cpp Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:57:53 -0700 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1161 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk No, no, no. On an H-800 a byte is 8-bits with 3 bytes stored per 24-bit word accessed via a special byte pointer that would make one truey sick. Had to write an assembler/linker/loader for the beast as an undergrad. Definately 8-bit bytes! Harry Reed ---------- > From: Terry Lambert > To: Tim Oneil > Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Re: signed/unsigned cpp > Date: Wednesday, June 04, 1997 2:50 PM > > > A byte is 8 bits, I don't care what architecture you are running on. > > On a Harris H-800, which is a 24 bit machine, Hollerith encoding > of characters in FORTRAN (the origin of the "byte") mandated 6 > bits. I believe this was the same for the 12 bit PDP machines > from DEC. CDC and others had 14 and 28 bit machines, which tended > to use 7 bit bytes. > > > Regards, > Terry Lambert > terry@lambert.org > --- > Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present > or previous employers.