And beyond the 7 bit ASCII there were many National ASCII code pages
using the 8th bit.
On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 12:07 PM Steve Thompson wrote:
>
> I think the answer to this question "If IBM had "inflicted" ASCII
> on its customers in 1964, would the System/360 have had the wide
> acceptance that it did?" was the WANG VS series machines. Just
> from my personal experience, many banks were using them, and IBM
> was, to some degree, targeting them with MP2000 & 3000 boxes.
> Again from my experience in programming with the Wang VS systems,
> they appeared to me to be a S/360 with DAT. I think this may have
> been because Dr. Wang waited until the patents expired for the
> S/370 features. I was involved in migrating several of those
> systems into an MVS/JES3 environment (mid-1980s time frame) used
> by a major bank that was buying up small banks that were using
> WANG VS machines. I had to convert their banking software data to
> match Florida Software (for banks) [not to be confused with the
> State of Florida]. Steve Thompson
> On 5/8/2024 11:36 AM, Tom Marchant wrote:
> > I have seen this before, and I am not persuaded. I find it interesting
> > that all of the references provided were written by Mr. Beemer himself,
> > some of them with another author.
> >
> > Perhaps, in hindsight it would have been better if IBM had made the
> > System/360 an ASCII only machine. But at the time, ASCII was new and
> > relatively unknown. As it was, the market had generally rejected ASCII
> > on System/360, so the USASCII bit was removed with the introduction of
> > System/370 in 1970.
> >
> > Both ASCII and EBCDIC are limited. ASCII, even more so because it is a
> > 7 bit code, though there are proprietary 8 bit extensions. No one knew
> > in 1964 that Unicode would later be designed based upon ASCII.
> >
> > The claim that "A 1-to-1 translation between the two [ASCII and EBCDIC]
> > exists" is false.Each includes characters that are not defined in the
> > other. This has always been the case.
> >
> > If IBM had "inflicted" ASCII on its customers in 1964, would the
> > System/360 have had the wide acceptance that it did? We will never know.
> >
> > According to "Architecture of System/360"
> > https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.gatech.edu/dist/8/175/files/2015/08/IBM-360.pdf
> >
> >
> > The reasons against such exclusive adoption was the
> > widespread use of the BCD code derived from and easily
> > translated to the IBM card code. To facilitate use of both
> > codes, the central processing units are designed with a
> > high degree of code independence, with generalized code
> > translation facilities, and with program-selectable BCD or
> > ASCII modes for code-dependent instructions. Neverthe-
> > less, a choice had to be made for the code-sensitive I/O
> > devices and for the programming support, and the solution
> > was to offer both codes, fully supported, as a user option.
> > Systems with either option will, of course, easily read or
> > write I/O media with the other code.
> >
> >
> > Aside from that, it wasn't the "P-bit", but the A bit.
> >
>
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Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
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