How to get an integer from a sequence of bytes

[Tim Roberts]

Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid.invalid> wrote:

>On 2013-06-03, Dan Stromberg <drsalists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> When I was a Freshman in college, I used a CDC Cyber a lot; it had 6 bit
>> bytes and 60 bit words.  This was in 1985.
>
>But you couldn't address individual 6-bit "hextets" in memory could
>you?  My recollection is that incrementing a memory address got you
>the next 60-bit chunk -- that means that by the older terminology a
>"byte" was 60 bits.  A "character" was 6 bits, and a single register
>or memory location could hold 6 characters.

A single machine word was 60 bits, so a single register read got you 10
characters.  There were three sets of registers -- the X registers were 60
bits, the A and B registers were 18 bits, which was the size of the largest
possible address.

CDC didn't actually use the term "byte".  That was IBM's domain.

When ASCII became unavoidable, most programs changed to using 5x 12-bit
"bytes" per word.

Ah, memories.  I spent 10 years working for Control Data.
-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.