Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!mcnc!ece-csc!uvacs!mac
From: mac@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Alex Colvin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.arch
Subject: Re: *Why* do modern machines mostly have 8-bit bytes?
Message-ID: <1810@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: Fri, 24-Jul-87 16:09:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: uvacs.1810
Posted: Fri Jul 24 16:09:07 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 17:54:26 EDT
References: <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <8315@utzoo.UUCP> <17137@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: University of Virginia
Lines: 12
Summary: bytes for text
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:3426 comp.arch:1689

Reasons for 8-bit bytes (instead of, e.g., 6)
	ASCII
	EBCDIC

Reasons for machines that operate on bytes instead  of just e.g., words.
	text processing
	text files
	character stream I/O

Remember BCD?  Fieldcode? PDP-8?

				mac the naive