Re: On Binary Digits

From	anthk <anthk@openbsd.home>
Newsgroups	comp.misc
Subject	Re: On Binary Digits
Date	2025-05-12 06:24 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<slrn101udtl.198p.anthk@openbsd.home.localhost> (permalink)
References	<vsh2fn$3fpam$1@dont-email.me> <86v7rnj0vn.fsf@example.com> <vsjp4s$29slh$1@dont-email.me> <67ed69b2$0$707$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <vspaeo$75m8$2@dont-email.me>

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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.

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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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