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Re: Byte

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According to Vir Campestris  <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid>:
>where on the PDP-10 a byte was an arbitrary number of bits.

Right. The original byte machine was the IBM STRETCH, which could
address bytes of arbitrary size. The slightly later 4020, used in the
SAGE air defense system, had 48 bit words and 6 bit bytes. S/360 is 
as far as I know the first machine with 8 bit bytes and the first
with byte addressing, with larger data units at 2, 4, or 8 byte
intervals.

The PDP-6 and -10 were word addressed but had load and store byte
instructions that could load and store bytes at any size and offset
that would fit in a 36 bit word, and could step through a byte string,
e.g., ILDB advanced the pointer to the next byte and fetched (Loaded)
that byte. Late versions of the PDP-10 had microcoded string
instructions that used the same byte pointer format.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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Byte Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2022-11-10 07:06 -0700
  Re: Byte Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2022-11-10 07:29 -0700
    Re: Byte scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2022-11-10 15:00 +0000
  Re: Byte Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> - 2022-11-10 10:40 -0500
  Re: Byte Timothy McCaffrey <timcaffrey420@gmail.com> - 2022-11-10 11:20 -0800
    Re: Byte Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2022-11-11 10:11 -0700
      Re: Byte Mike <mlevinespmfltr@redshift.com> - 2022-11-11 12:32 -0800
      Re: Byte Fred Weigel <fridtjof.martin.weigel@gmail.com> - 2022-11-12 07:51 -0800
        Re: Byte Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2022-11-14 09:01 -1000
    Re: Byte Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> - 2022-11-18 13:02 -0700
  Re: Byte Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> - 2022-11-11 21:33 +0000
    Re: Byte John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2022-11-15 18:43 +0000
  Re: Byte Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2022-11-17 22:26 -0800

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