Re: On Binary Digits

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From	Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com>
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Subject	Re: On Binary Digits
Date	Mon, 12 May 2025 19:56:06 +0100
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anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> writes:

> On 2025-04-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On 02 Apr 2025 16:45:38 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>>
>>> Octal was used heavily on the PDP-11, if you used the assembler.
>>
>> All DEC’s systems used octal heavily, prior to the VAX. That’s when they 
>> started using hex.
>>
>> All the DEC machines prior to the PDP-11 had word lengths that were 
>> multiples of 3 (12, 18, 36), so octal worked nicely. Even though the 
>> PDP-11 was a 16-bit machine, fields in its instruction format were still 
>> designed to line up with octal digits.
>
> Why? "octal" means base eight ( as 'ocho' in Spanish, same Latin root).
>
> forth>3 8 lcm .
>
> 24
>
> Not very fitting for a 36 bit machine except for opcodes.

Octal numbers are 3 bits per digit, and 36 divides by 3.

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On Binary Digits Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> - 2025-04-01 15:58 +0000
  Re: On Binary Digits Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2025-04-01 17:35 +0100
    Re: On Binary Digits Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> - 2025-04-02 16:37 +0000
      Re: On Binary Digits arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2025-04-02 16:45 +0000
        Re: On Binary Digits Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> - 2025-04-02 20:40 +0000
        Re: On Binary Digits Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-04 19:03 +0000
          Re: On Binary Digits anthk <anthk@openbsd.home> - 2025-05-12 06:24 +0000
            Re: On Binary Digits Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2025-05-12 19:56 +0100
      Re: On Binary Digits Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> - 2025-04-02 20:41 +0000
        Re: On Binary Digits Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> - 2025-04-03 12:08 +0300
  Re: On Binary Digits Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-01 22:31 +0000
  Re: On Binary Digits vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-04-03 02:05 +0000
    Re: On Binary Digits snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-04-03 09:32 +0100
      Re: On Binary Digits kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-04-03 17:33 -0400
      Re: On Binary Digits vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-04-04 07:19 +0000
        Re: On Binary Digits snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-04-04 11:53 +0100

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