On 8/25/2021 1:58 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 2021-08-25 10:27 a.m., Todd Goodman via cctalk wrote:
On 8/25/2021 11:49 AM, ben via cctalk wrote:
[..SNIP..]
C uses cheap tricks for speed. 8 bit bytes, 32 bit integers, taken
from B. I have 21 bit CPU, with 3 7 bit bytes/word. Algol would have
a PACK/UPACK function, and be fairly portable. C on the other hand a
mess.
Ok. I don't have 21 bit cpu, but I have this spare FPGA card ...
Nope, the standard doesn't specify those bit sizes.
Back in the 80s I was using the BBN C Machine with 10-bit bytes and
happily building from source I picked up on the newsgroups with
little issue
What is the BBN C Machine?
P.110 of https://walden-family.com/bbn/bbn-print2.pdf has some slight
information.
It was advertised by Bolt, Beranek and Newman as the first computer to
be designed around the C language.
It had 10-bit bytes and 20-bit words.
At the time I was working there it was used to run all the Network
Monitoring utilities to manage their commercial networks as well as Ingres.
It's amazing how much was running in 2MB and two "walking
washing-machine" multiplatter disk pack drives (CDC if I remember right,
but could be wrong).
Unfortunately all my marketing and engineering materials from my time at
BBN Communications are gone now.
One of the most memorable moments there was when the Morris worm was
discovered and someone was sprinting down the hallway and yelling to
shut down the gateway between the ARPAnet and MILnet
That was also the place where support was having a hard time determining
why an IMP kept shutting down around the same time every night. So the
support guy working the problem decided to set up a video camera at the
customer site to record the front panel lights to see if he could figure
out what happened right before it went down.
The camera caught the cleaning crew coming in and unplugging the IMP so
they could plug in their vacuum
