On 2019-04-06 00:33, Phil Budne wrote:
Johnny Billquist <[email protected]> wrote:
In DEC terminology those are words.
It goes: byte, word, longword, quadword, octaword. (8, 16, 32, 64, 128
bits.)
Halfword is something that I first saw on Motorola 68K, but maybe it's
been used elsewhere as well. But it feels wrong to use that terminology
on DEC systems.
Well, in the DEC VAX world!
Sorry. Yes. Well, the VAX was not the start of it. It's just an
extension of the PDP-11. For which the natural size of a word was
obviously 16 bits. And the VAX just kept the terminology. But since the
question was related to a file in VMS, I think it's fair to keep the
terminology of those machines here...
I came from the DEC world of 36 bit words, and 18 bit halfwords.
Right.
I was a member of of the SAFE project, a 64-bit VAX datatype
compatible RISC machine led by Alan Kotok (the KA10 designer).
Instructions were named by how many bits they operated on. When
Cutler absconded with the project and renamed it PRISM, they replaced
8/16/32/64 with B/W/L/Q.
Morons.
Don't be to touchy. All is long gone now anyway. :-)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: [email protected] || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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