Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Size of SysV "block" (really: byte != 8 bits)
Message-ID: <6705@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 12:46:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: steinmet.6705
Posted: Wed Jul 15 12:46:15 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 00:46:40 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 34
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:3258 comp.arch:1602

In article <2792@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>In article <142700010@tiger.UUCP> rjd@tiger.UUCP writes:
>> O.K., I'll byte.  (oops, pun initially unintended.)   A byte IS eight bits!!!
>> Maybe you are thinking of a word??  And a nibble is four bits, and a gulp is
>> sixteen bits (or was this a mouthful?), etc....
>
Let me clarify this:
  8 bits is a byte
  4 bits is a nybble
  2 bits is a tayste (actually 2 bits is a quarter)

36 bit machines usually support at least 6 and 9 bit bytes in hardware,
although I'm sure someone will write and tell me that their machine is
not only obsolete but brain-damaged as well and doesn't have any
hardware bytes.

36 bit machines were a great idea which fell by the wayside... the extra
bit in the byte allows many extended character sets (ASCII + 384
others), the short is +/-262144, large enough for many applications, and
the long is +/-64*10^9, which will hold almost any real world value.

When most of our applications were moved from a Honeywell to vaxen and
an IBM, we did a lot of conversion to long, double, and real*8, because
the number of significant digits dropped to <1.

    ================================================================
    |   Please any followup discussion of archetecture to 	   |
    |   comp.arch not wizards!					   |
    ================================================================

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {chinet | philabs | sesimo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me