On 05/25/2017 08:13 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: . > > For some definition of "standard". It seems that IBM did this, and DEC prior > to the PDP-11, but other machines of that time or earlier numbered bits > according to the power of 2 they represent, i.e., the "current standard". > CDC and Burroughs are examples.
Not all CDC machines did; consider the Cyber 200 series: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/cdc/cyber/cyber_200/60256000_STAR-100hw_Dec75.pdf But that only made sense, as the Cyber 200 machines are bit-addressable. For a time, my work straddled both the Cyber 70 and 200 systems, and so had to adjust my thinking. Not just bit-ordering, but the 70/6000 used 6-bit display code, while the 200 used 8 bit ASCII. Fun times. --Chuck
