// COMPLETE THREAD

Re: questions about bits and bytes

2 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child

NODE 1f0b9bbaRe: questions about bits and bytes
At 09:50 AM 4/11/96 -0400, Richard Martin wrote:
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>On Apr 10,  6:57pm, jim bell wrote:
>> At 06:29 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Simon Spero wrote:
>> >No, bytes are no always 8 bits - some machines use(d) 9-bit bytes.
>> I notice you gave no examples.  Why is that?
>Perhaps he thought that most people who were interested could go look
>it up themselves.
>
>- From a really quick web search, we find that the SGI Impact jams 9-bit
>bytes [that's what it says] across the Rambus internally. I'm not sure
>if the memory itself is 9-bit.

Are you sure they're not referring to 8 bits of data and a parity bit?  In 
any case, please give the address to the list so that it can be checked out.
NODE 0be66f05Re: questions about bits and bytes
On Apr 12 at 8:07
jim bell wrote:
>
>Are you sure they're not referring to 8 bits of data and a parity bit?  In 
>any case, please give the address to the list so that it can be checked out.
>
>
>

Come on, give it up already and admit you were wrong. At least 8 different
people have cited examples of machines that supported non 8bit bytes. Your
pride is getting the best of you.

If you mean 8 bits, you should really say Octets as has always been the
form of Internet RFC's where the distinction is important.

It may be standard today, but it was not always so..

--
____________________________________________________________________________
Doug Hughes					Engineering Network Services
System/Net Admin  				Auburn University
			doug@eng.auburn.edu
		Pro is to Con as progress is to congress