Content deleted Content added
Steamerandy (talk | contribs) Tags: Mobile edit Mobile app edit |
|||
Line 135:
That seventh bit idea could not have been implemented. The wordmark bit is hardware implemented. The MCW ('''M'''ove '''C'''haracters '''W'''ordmark) instruction for instance moved variable length fields terminating on the word mark. Numeric or alpha were treated no different. The Honeywell H200 H1200 H3200 and H4200 all had MCW instructions. Arithmetic operations also used wordmark field demarcation. The Honeywell computers had 8 bit memory having 6 data, a word mark and item mark bits.
[[User:Steamerandy|Steamerandy]] ([[User talk:Steamerandy|talk]]) 17:26, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
::It does sound like there are 1 or 2 extra bits per character. Are you saying there was no way for a program to read or write these extra bits? Or that the implementation was somehow different from having extra bits per character (perhaps it was a table of locations with the bit "set" and thus you were restricted to how many times it was turned on). I think it is obvious that instructions designed to use these bits to end strings won't work but that is not an explanation as to why this extra storage was not taken advantage of. It is also surprising that they would in effect reserve 1/4 of their memory for such a limited use, when you consider how incredibly expensive the memory was at that time.[[User:Spitzak|Spitzak]] ([[User talk:Spitzak|talk]]) 17:36, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
| |||