Rich Alderson <ri...@livingcomputers.org> writes: > The 5 characters per word is irrelevant to a discussion of tape, whether > 9- or 7-track: That's how ASCII text was represented in memory, on disk, > on DECtape, or on any other word-oriented medium. Representing the bits > in an ASCII character by the character itself (to make divisions on the > tape more clear), this appears diagrammatically as follows: > > Text: HELLOworld > > Memory: > HHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOO_wwwwwwwooooooorrrrrrrlllllllddddddd_ > > Core Dump: High Density: SIXBIT: (7 track) > HHHHHHHE HHHHHHHE HHHHHH > EEEEEELL EEEEEELL HEEEEE > LLLLLLLL LLLLLLLL EELLLL > LLLLOOOO LLLLOOOO LLLLLL > ....OOO_ OOO_wwww LLLLOO > wwwwwwwo wwwooooo OOOOO_ > oooooorr oorrrrrr wwwwww > rrrrrlll rlllllll wooooo > lllldddd ddddddd_ oorrrr > ....ddd_ rrrlll > lllldd > ddddd_
Let's add ANSI-ASCII: .HHHHHHH .EEEEEEE .LLLLLLL .LLLLLLL _OOOOOOO .wwwwwww .ooooooo .rrrrrrr .lllllll _ddddddd The nice property with this format is that ASCII text in 36-bit words comes out as ASCII text in octets, while also preserving binary 36-bit data.
