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From: Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp11,comp.sys.dec,vmsnet.pdp-11
Subject: Re: Y3K for PDP-11 Operating Systems
Date: 25 May 2011 20:58:36 -0400
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Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.sys.dec:496

billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:

> OK, I guess that is another point of view thing.  While i agree that disks
> tend to be blocked they do deliver the raw data when asked and the actual
> sectoring never makes it off the disk.  As for tape and ethernet, even
> the blocking data is just other byte values.  Now, card, there is the
> anomaly.  But I guess in the long run regardless of what the card looked
> like the date was delivered as single characters.  (I really wish I
> could get a card reader for my collection!!)

I'd just like to point out that the sectors ("blocks") on a TOPS-20 file
system are 256 18-bit+parity halfwords long, with 4 sectors per page.
Tops-10 works in blocks instead.  Those amounts of data are what show up
in buffers made up of 36-bit words.  So-called "byte" streams are parochial.
:-)

> Well, as far as I, and I would imagine most people today, are concerned
> if it isn't WYSIWYG it isn't a "word processor" it is a document processor.
> (I still have a professor here, and not some old guy, one of our youngest,
> who still does all of his academic stuff in LaTex!)

I write professional documentation in LaTeX.  (Then again, I'm probably
an old guy, so it doesn't count.)  I can move my documentation sources
from Windows (mandated by the IT department) to Mac OS X (at home) to
any Linux or BSD version (JBIFLI), and get the same results on any of them.

-- 
Rich Alderson                                   news@alderson.users.panix.com
    the russet leaves of an autumn oak/inspire once again the failed poet/
    to take up his pen/and essay to place his meagre words upon the page...