Actually, I'll throw a little nit out there. There is one feature of z/Arch that is EBCDIC specific - and that is the decimal instruction set, with emphasis on UNPK, ED and EDMK.
UNPK changes the digits to X'Fn'/X'ln' where l is the last nybble. Traditional 7-bit ASCII without parity does not define these values, and if you go to 8 bit then you have all sorts of ISO/Unicode possibilities. ED and EDMK use X'20', X'21' and X'22 where IBM has defined these to be digit selector, significance starter and field separator. In 7-bit ASCII they are space, ! and " (double quote). (Note that UNPACK/PACK ASCII are defined in general instructions.) At the risk of introducing a nostalgia thread because I don't have an S/360 POP available, in the old S/360 with the ASCII bit in the PSW, did ED/EDMK/UNPK act any different, or were they not supported in ASCII mode? Later, Ray -- M. Ray Mullins Roseville, CA, USA http://www.catherdersoftware.com/ http://www.mrmullins.big-bear-city.ca.us/ http://www.the-bus-stops-here.org/ > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charles Mills > Sent: Sunday 15 January 2006 17:33 > To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU > Subject: Re: z/OS on the ISERIES > > Is it a fair statement to say "zSeries [is] EBCDIC"? > > >From the zPOP: > > "Although the System/360 architecture was originally designed > to support The Extended Binary-Coded-Decimal Interchange Code > (EBCDIC), the Instructions and data formats of the > architecture are for the most part independent of the > external code which is to be processed by the machine. > For most instructions, all 256 possible combinations of bit > patterns for a Particular byte can be processed, independent > of the character which the bit pattern is intended to > represent ... a machine operating in Accordance with > z/Architecture can process EBCDIC, ASCII, or any other code > which can be represented in eight or fewer bits per character." > > It's really z/OS, its subsystems, and its typical > applications that are EBCDIC, not the zSeries hardware. In > other words, the fact that OS/400 is EBCDIC based is a very > small advantage in zSeries emulation on iSeries hardware > (relative to, e.g., Pentium hardware). > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
