🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1430@geac.UUCP> daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown) writes:
>a 100% increase in disk space *has* been accepted by even
>penny-pinching commercial customers.... Don't forget, all of the old
>mainframes used 4-bit BCD at one time or another, and are now using
>6-bit, 7-bit ascii and 8-bit ebcdic.

Sorry, but 4-bit BCD uses 4 bits to store a digit, and 2 digits to store a
character: voila, 8 bit characters.

There *may* have been some machine, some time, which used 5 bit characters;
but I doubt it.  5 bits is not enough to store an upper-case only alphabet
and 10 digits.  (5 bit codes have been used in specialized data structures,
where the data is known to be mono-case alphabetic.)  But basically, 6 bits
is the minimum character size any computer has used; and 8 bit characters go
all the way back.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108