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: *Why* do modern machines mostly have 8-bit bytes? Message-ID: <6782@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> Date: Thu, 23-Jul-87 08:37:35 EDT Article-I.D.: steinmet.6782 Posted: Thu Jul 23 08:37:35 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 07:42:11 EDT References: <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <8315@utzoo.UUCP> <2807@phri.UUCP> Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 21 Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:3378 comp.arch:1670 In article <2807@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: $ ...... $ Anybody for a bit-aligned processor with variable word size (in the $ same way the pdp-10 had variable byte size)? You could do "ADD X, Y, I" $ where X and Y are the operands and I is the number of bits of precision $ wanted. I should really mark that with a :-), but I'm partly serious (a $ small part). $ -- $ Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy $ System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute $ 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 I believe that the Intel 432 had the ability to address object in this manner. The NS32xxx family has the ability to do loads and stores to registers on bit boundaries, using variable length words. I have seen this in the CPU manual, not used it. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {chinet | philabs | sesimo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me